Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Number 2
January 2013
International Journal
on Strikes and
Social Conflicts
Table of contents
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR .............................................................................. 6
DOSSIER: WHO IS THE WORKING CLASS? .......................................................... 7
THE WORKING CLASS TODAY: THE NEW FORM OF BEING OF THE CLASS
WHO LIVES FROM ITS LABOUR
Editorial Board
Alvaro Bianchi
Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth,
UNICAMP
(Campinas, Brazil)
Andria Galvo
Instituto de Filosofia e Cincias Humanas,
UNICAMP
(Campinas, Brazil)
Raquel Varela
Instituto de Histria Contempornea,
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
(Portugal)
Serge Wolikow
Maison des Sciences de lHomme,
Universit de Bourgogne
(Dijon, France)
Executive Editor
Antnio Simes do Pao
Instituto de Histria Contempornea
Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal)
Contact
workersoftheworld2012@yahoo.co.uk
Website
http://workersoftheworldjournal.net/
Workers of the World is the journal of the International Association Strikes and Social
Conflicts, born of the International Conference Strikes and Social Conflicts, held in Lisbon,
UNL, on 16-20 March 2011. The Association now has the participation of three dozen
academic institutions from Europe, Africa, North and South America. Website: http://iasscmshdijon.in2p3.fr/
Advisory Board
Andrea Komlosy
Angelo DOrsi
Anita Chan
Antony Todorov
Armando Boito
Asef Bayat
Asli Odman
Babacar Fall
Beverly Silver
Bryan Palmer
Christian DeVito
Claire Cerruti
Cristina Borderias
Deborah Bernstein
Elizabeth Faue
Fernando Rosas
Franois Jarrige
Gregory S. Kealey
Jean Vigreux
Javier Tbar
John Kelly
Kevin Murphy
Manuel Perz Ledesma
Marcelo Badar Matos
Mart Marin
Michael Hall
Michael Seidman
Mirta Lobato
Nitin Varma
Nicole Mayer-Ahuja
Nicols Iigo Carrera
Paula Godinho
Peter Birke
Procopis Papastratis
Ratna Saptari
Ricardo Antunes
Ruben Vega
Ruy Braga
Silke Neunsinger
Verity Burgmann
Wendy Goldman
Xavier Vigna
The working class today: the new form of being of the class
who lives from its labour1
Ricardo Antunes
ho constitutes the working class today? Does it still maintain its position of
centrality in social transformations? These are not simple questions and for
decades they have been subject to an avalanche of deconstructions.
The central thesis we seek here to develop is that the centre of social
transformation, in the amplified destructive logic of contemporary
capitalism, is still principally rooted in the whole of the working class. From
the beginning, we will refute two equivocal theories: that nothing has
changed within the workers universe and, its opposite, that the working
class is not capable of radically transforming capitalist society.
It is curious that, as the number of workers who live by selling their
labour-power has increased on a global scale, so many authors have waved
farewell to the proletariat and have defended the notion of the loss of
centrality of the category of labour, or the end of human emancipation
through labour.
What I shall demonstrate here is an opposite path. I will attempt a
critique of the critique in order to make clear what I have been calling the
new morphology of labour and its potentialities.
Ricardo Antunes
10
Ricardo Antunes
11
12
Ricardo Antunes
Mszros, Istvn. The Power of Ideology, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989; Beyond
Capital: Towards a Theory of Transition, London: Merlin Press, 1995.
8
Habermas, Op.Cit; Kurz, Op.Cit.; Gorz, Andr. Imaterial, So Paulo: Annablume, 2005.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
13
14
Huws, Ursula 2003, The Making of a Cybertariat (Virtual Work in a Real World). New
York/London: Monthly Review Press/The Merlin Press, 2003.
10
Antunes, Ricardo e Braga, Ruy. Infoproletrios: degradao real do trabalho virtual.
So Paulo: Boitempo, 2009. Also consult Vasapollo, Luciano. O Trabalho Atpico e a
Precariedade, So Paulo: Expresso Popular, 2005.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Ricardo Antunes
11
15
16
Ricardo Antunes
15
17
18
20
There are several interpretations of Marxs theories, some of them opposing juvenile
and mature writings or Capital and the Grundrisse. We believe these are false
oppositions.
Kuczynski, Jrgen. Evolucin de la clase obrera. Madrid: Guadarrama, 1967, pp. 50-51
and p. 59. (My own translation from the Spanish edition).
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
21
22
12
Ibid., p.572.
Ibid., p.572.
14
Ibid., p.574.
15
Ibid., p.632.
16
(...) the capitalist may safely leave its fulfillment [of the reproduction of the labourpower] to the labourers instincts of self-preservation and of propagation. Ibid., p.572).
13
23
24
17
These conditions of existence are, of course, only the productive forces and forms of
intercourse at any particular time. (Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich. The German
Ideology; MECW; volume 5; Part I: Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and
Idealist Outlook. D. Proletarians and Communism. Individuals, Class, and Community.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01d.htm#5d7
18
This mode of production (...) is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite
form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. Ibid.,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a2
19
Marx pointed out that one of the state machinerys functions was to serve as source of
employment for the surplus population (Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte; Marx/Engels Collected Works (MECW), as compiled and printed by
Progress Publishers of the Soviet Union in collaboration with Lawrence & Wishart
(London)
and
International
Publishers
(New
York);
volume
11.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch04.htm
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Proletarianisation Processes21
The relation between the different social classes and capital is linked
to the moment of capitalist development in a concrete society, to the
proletarianization of social fractions that join the working class as being
deprived of their material conditions of existence, and to the processes of
repulsion of the surplus population. The so-called transitional situations and
the existence of combinations with non-capitalist modes of production
(slavery, serfdom) are not only due to their persistence even after the
development of capitalist relations, but also because, in certain
circumstances, capitalist development itself generates them. These are longterm and not lineal processes capitalism can generate or renew noncapitalist (in the sense of non wage) forms of production. There is a large
20
21
There is a large bibliography on this subject, as, for example, my own book Gnesis,
formacin y crisis del capitalismo en el Chaco. Salta: Edunsa, 2011.
Proletarianization refers to the process of deprivation of material conditions of
existence that transforms a part of society into workers disposable for capital by means
of wage relations, that is to say, by means of the appearance of a free meeting between
commodity owners. It does not mean that this is a one way process.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
25
26
22
23
I.e. the classic book by Assadourian, Carlos, Cardoso, Ciro et al. Modos de produccin
en Amrica Latina. Buenos Aires: Cuadernos de Pasado y Presente N 40, 1973. For
Europe, see Dobb, Maurice. Estudios sobre el desarrollo del capitalismo. Buenos Aires:
Siglo XXI, 1971, pp. 56-61. Also Karl Kautskys Die Agrarfrage, about German
peasants going through the proletarianization process.
van der Linden, Marcel. Conceptualising the World Working Class. In: Kannan, K.P.
and Rutten, Mario (eds). Labour and Transformation in Asia. Critical Reflections and
Empirical Studies. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003. Van der Linden, Marcel.
Workers of the World, Essays toward a Global Labor History. Leiden: Brill Academic
Publishers, 2007.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
24
Wage relations prevail around the world, with few self-employed and family workers,
few employers and many wage-earners (more than 60% of the economically active
population); the exceptions are Asia and Subsaharan Africa. In East Asia (45%) and
South East Asia and Pacific (38%) wage-earners are a little less than half the
economically active population; in South Asia and Subsaharan Africa they are a
minority (between 20 and 25%) (International Labour Organization; Global Employment
Trends. January 2008; Geneva, 2008, p. 37, Figure 8 Status of employment share in
total employment, 2007 all regions (%)).
25
For example, when Marx refers to the prohibition to emigrate of mechanics of the
English cotton districts demanded by manufacturers (Marx, Karl. Capital. Volume I;
chapter XXIII, p.574). Marx also states that as soon as (in the colonies, e.g.) adverse
circumstances prevent the creation of an industrial reserve army and, with it, the
absolute dependence of the working-class upon the capitalist class, capital along with its
commonplace Sancho Panza, rebels against the sacred law of supply and demand, and
tries to check its inconvenient action by forcible means and State interference (Marx,
Karl. Capital; Volume I; chapter XXV, p.640).
26
Ibid., p.737.
27
Ibid., p.10.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
27
28
Ibid., p.396.
Marx, Karl. Outline of the Critique of Political Economy, Op.Cit.
30
Marx, Karl. Capital; Book III, chapter LII; op. cit.; pp. 885-6.
29
31
32
Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich. The German Ideology; MECW, volume 5; Part I:
Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook. D. Proletarians and
Communism. Individuals, Class, and Community; http://www.marxists.org/archive/
marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01d.htm#p76
With classic books such as Primitive Rebels and Bandits by Eric Hobsbawm and The
crowd in History and Ideology and popular protest by George Rud.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
29
30
33
industrial working class34, they are reducing the working class. Since the
beginning of capitalism, the working class has comprised fractions and
strata of workers that have largely exceeded the number of industrial
workers.
Negri stresses the automatization of factories and the informatization
of the social plane. Based on an excerpt in which Marx posed a hypothesis
about the future development of labour in capitalism, Negri states that work
becomes more immaterial, depending mainly on the intellectual and
scientific energies that constitute it.35 The social worker emerges, an
interpreter of the labour cooperative functions of the social productive
networks. The composition of the proletariat becomes social, but also more
immaterial from the point of view of the substance of work, and mobile,
polymorphic and flexible from the point of view of its forms. In Hardt and
Negri`s words, in conceptual terms we understand proletariat as a broad
category that includes all those whose labour is directly or indirectly
exploited by and subjected to capitalist norms of production and
reproduction.36 Therefore, it includes wage earners and workers that do not
receive a wage, factory and non-factory workers, poor and well-off workers.
The new subject is the multitude: a multiplicity of singularities, a nonworking class, capable of autonomous development.37
Thus, as we noted before, the distinction between those deprived of
their material conditions of existence that are exploited by capital by means
of wage relations and those who keep the property of those conditions, even
if capital manages to appropriate a part of the value produced by them,
vanishes. And a variety of forms of exploitation, that imply different
objective contradictions and constitute the basis of different struggles,
disappear. We must insist on the capability of capital of appropriating value
produced by different social classes, and not only by those deprived of the
material conditions of existence, not only today, but throughout the whole
history of capitalism.
Negri states that nothing remains outside the dominion of capital.
And it is true. But following the hypotheses from the Grundrisse, he leaves
aside the population law in capitalism discovered by Marx: capitalist
34
Hardt, Michael & Negri, Antonio. Empire. Cambridge London: Harvard University
Press, 2000, p. 53.
35
Negri, Antonio, Guas. Cinco lecciones en torno a Imperio. Buenos Aires, Paids, 2004,
p.75.
36
Hardt & Negri. Op. Cit, p. 52.
37
Negri. Op. Cit., p. 118.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
31
32
38
39
40
41
Iigo Carrera, Nicols & Podest, Jorge. Anlisis de una relacin de fuerzas sociales
objetiva. Buenos Aires: Cicso, 1985.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
33
34
35
36
criteria that do not meet this need. So, as we did with the Argentine census
information, it is necessary to re-elaborate them. And all the present efforts
to record and analyse workers struggles and social conflicts should be
redoubled, a task that largely exceeds the purpose of this article.
Jorge Grespan
he Problem
In its recent and more advanced forms, capitalism has seemingly
overwhelmed the framework of traditional relations between capital and
labour. This is at least what is affirmed by some authors, to whom value is
today produced much more through technical advances and knowledge than
through labour, depriving Marxs theory of value partially or entirely of its
validity. The workers of this new sphere, called immaterial, would have
much more importance than those associated with the production of real
commodities, and necessary labour time would have been replaced by
deviating and particular forms of determining time in the creation of
exchange value. In this cognitive capitalism, based on access to information,
the theory of social classes and of historical movement as class conflict
would be relegated to the past. For a convincing theoretical and practical
appraisal of social conflicts in the XXI century, an adequate understanding
of these new forms is therefore crucial.
These changes cannot be simply denied, for they express something
that has actually happened. Nor can they have their importance diminished
by showing the prevalence of classical forms of work in countries situated
38
The expressions capital in general and in multiplicity were discovered and their
meaning in Marx work was explained by Roman Rosdolsky in his classic book.
Rosdolsky, Roman. The making of Marxs Capital. London: Pluto Press, 1977.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Jorge Grespan
their generality, i.e. in the sense that all social relations occur under their
form. A commodity is not something abstract. On the contrary, it is very
tangible and can be found everywhere around us; it is the most generalized
form and the first one by whose power capitalism transforms modes of
production and ways of life different from those convenient to him. But the
opposition inherent to every commodity, the one between use value and
exchange value, is also the simplest. And through its movement in social
practices emerge more complex oppositions, like the opposition between
labour power and capital, or the opposition between productive and
unproductive labour.
The relation of Book I and II with Book III of Capital fulfills the
same determination. The forms dealt with in the level of capital in general
appear before, because they ground the forms of competition among
capitalists. But in this resulting level the first forms acquire the most
complex articulation. Whereas the first establish social averages, like value,
competition occurs by a process of deviating from averages. At the same
time, nevertheless, always seeking to escape from averages, competition
establishes them. It is precisely in this way that value is socially fixed, so
that only in Book III is it possible to understand how the entire process
described in Book I actually works, as in a kind of retrospective definition,
fulfilled by categorical presentation.
Let us examine this point in more detail and precision.
39
40
The reference here is to the famous metaphor of Book I: Capital is dead labour, that,
vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it
sucks. Marx, Karl. Capital, vol.1. New York: International Publishers, p.241.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Jorge Grespan
41
42
The price of production results from adding the average profit to the
cost price of each individual capitalist. In other words, each one of them has
his own cost structure, generally different from others. But from their
competition an average profit is imposed upon an entire industrial branch,
and even among different branches, places, and countries:
Under capitalist production () it is rather a matter of realizing
as much surplus value, or profit, on capital advanced for
production, as any other capital of the same magnitude, or pro
rata to its magnitude in whichever line it is applied.5
Capitalists are always comparing their individual possibility of profit
to that of their rivals, and if it is smaller than what can be obtained in
another sphere of production, or in another country, no one hesitates in at
least trying to transfer their investments. The consequence is the
equalization of the many rates of profit forming an average that, once added
to cost prices and here individual differences are actually conserved
results in the price of production.
In the composition of this reference price, both levels of competition
are present: the level of the average general profit, and the level of the
difference between costs of each capitalist. Even more, they are present in
the permanent movement by which each one tries to deviate from the
average, in order to get an extraordinary earning, but by doing so
contributes to the restoration of the average. And then, through this
movement the permanent division of social labour between the various
activities where use value is created occurs. That which in Book I was done
by commodity producers, now is done by capital for capital, i.e. with the
purpose of profit. The mediated and negative form by which the average is
constituted, form imposed by competition, recovers the central characteristic
of capitalist society, as formulated by Marx for the simple commodity
circulation, namely, that the labour of private individuals takes the form of
its opposite, labour directly social in its form.6
But now an essential difference between these two moments of the
presentation of Capital is clear. The division of social labour executed by
capital through prices of production, through average and differential
profits, fulfills a rule totally distinct from the former. Each individual
Marx, Karl. Capital, vol.3. New York: International Publishers, 1998, p.194.
Ibid., p. 69.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Jorge Grespan
Ibid., p. 158.
Ibid. p. 152. The complete quoted text is: (...) on the assumption which has being the
basis of all our analysis so far, namely that the commodities are sold at their values.
There is no doubt, on the other hand, that aside from unessential, incidental or mutually
compensating distinctions, differences in the average rate of profit in the various
branches of industry do not exist in reality, and could not exist without abolishing the
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
43
44
entire system of capitalist production. It would seem, therefore, that here the theory of
value is incompatible with the actual process, incompatible with the real phenomena of
production and that for this reason any attempt to understand these phenomena should be
given up. This last part, deviates from the original text of Marx. A closer translation
would be: () the theory of value should be refused in order to conceive the actual
movement. In the original German, see Marx, Karl. konomische Manuskripte 18631867, MEGA 4.2. Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1992, p.230.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Jorge Grespan
It must be here remembered that the concept of industrial capital is not limited to that
invested in industry properly speaking, but includes that invested in agriculture, fishing,
mining etc.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
45
46
10
Marx, Karl. Capital, vol.3. New York: International Publishers, 1998, p.372.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Jorge Grespan
place mere property under the form of interest as the source of social
surplus.
Not the relation between worker and capitalist, but between two
kinds of capitalists now appears as the form of value valorization. And all
this happens within the distribution level, not the production level.
Distribution, however, by inverting the fundamental order of capital, now
commands production. Even if labour is still central for value and surplus
value creation, it is relegated to a second place by the fetishism, completed
and expressed by the famous formula D-D. It is not by chance that in the
visible modern social processes, the materiality of labour appears with
diminished importance.
Yet there is a last step in the detachment of private property, a step
represented by ground rent in the sixth part of Book III. Marx there presents
a new social division, between a group of landowners that only own land
without using it, and another group of rural capitalists that uses natural
resources to obtain surplus value from rural workers. Part of this surplus
value is destined to the payment of rent, in a new deduction from total social
surplus. It consists of a kind of premium that non-proprietors must pay to
proprietors for using a resource from which they are excluded by property
itself. Marx speaks of monopoly to characterize such exclusion and
emphasize how the power of certain persons over definite portions of
globe, as exclusive spheres of their private will to the exclusion of all
others is arbitrary.11 It is noteworthy that exclusion here occurs by the
private will of certain persons, something belonging to the legal sphere
as much as the legal claims that entitles the proprietor of money capital to
lend at interest. But property appears now as a monopoly, because it must
necessarily exclude, in order to force the excluded ones to pay rent. And
Marxs irony about the right of disposition over definite portions of globe
shows the patent absurdity of the situation.
It is again impossible to explain in detail here how Marx presents
this subject matter. But it must be said that from ground rent he opens the
possibility of deriving new forms, as for instance rent over natural resources
in general and building site rent. From all this, a first element to be retained
is that in rent the distributive principle through private property completes
the process of detachment from the principle of labour as value creator. Rent
takes part of the total surplus value of society, and for it the proprietor of
nature does not have to give employment to anybody, just receiving what
11
47
48
Jorge Grespan
12
Marx, Karl. konomische Manuskripte 1863-1867. Op.Cit., p. 681. This text was not
included by Engels in his edition of Book III, and has no correspondence in the English
translation of Capital.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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50
Jorge Grespan
51
52
side of capitals fetishism. And it is not casual that deviations from the
essential forms of value distribution through social averages are today
decisive as a guarantee to the reproduction of capital. Indeed, competition
and mutual expropriation among capitalists are the only strategies for
survival in an historical moment of the chronic fall of profit rates. Patents
over products of immaterial labour, not exactly over this labour itself,
represent a central element of these strategies.
But in no moment, patents and brands really substitute the creation
of value by socially necessary labour time. The formal character of the
process by which social substance is dominated, i.e. labour by capital, is
always menaced by the contradiction between form and substance.
Expropriation of capital by capital is not able to restore the force to
expropriation of labour by capital. However much competition invents
devices to distribute surplus value among the various branches of social
capital, a time arrives in which this does not resolve anymore the problems
in effective creation of surplus value.
Present technology acts much more in the sense of making possible
appropriation, not production of surplus value. And even being important as
consumers, unproductive workers do not have the same social relevance as
productive workers have. Capital in the so called service sector is not able
to employ workers in the creation of surplus value, but it exploits them more
and more brutally, because they create for their employers the legal
claims to social surplus value. The more they work, the greater is this claim
of their employers, the portion these capitalists can capture from the whole.
This is the meaning of profit for bankers and merchants. Mistakenly it is
registered in social accounting books as profit, together with profits of the
productive sector; yet it is just a deduced part of total profit correspondent to
the surplus value created by workers of productive sectors. Therefore, the
calculations made in the 1990s to demonstrate that the rate of profit was
rising, when it actually was already depressed, were wrong.
The present crisis can well be understood as an obliged return of
deviations to patterns, of prices to values, of unproductive to productive
labour. The predominance of credit is not itself affected, only transferred to
public debts, but governments are incapable to permanently resolve chronic
debt and speculation problems, because these problems are the answer
found by capitalism to deeper and older valorization problems. A technical
and organizational revolution like that which occurred as an answer to the
Great Depression of the 1930s would be today irrelevant, in view of the fact
that it already happened in the 1990s, but acted in the sense of the
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Jorge Grespan
53
I am plundering here earlier publications, some of which I wrote together with my friend
Karl Heinz Roth, the discussions with whom have taught me so much. See especially the
editorial introduction and conclusion in van der Linden and Roth, K.H. (eds), ber Marx
hinaus. Berlin: Assoziation A, 2009, and chapters 2-4 in my Workers of the World.
Essays toward a Global Labor History. Chicago: Haymarket, 2010.
Marx, Karl. Letter to Friedrich Engels, 8 December 1857. In: Marx, K. and Engels, F.
Collected Works, vol. 40. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1983, p. 217.
56
capitalisms recovery from the depression of the 1880s and 1890s, or of the
theory of the rising surplus, developed by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy to
account for the boom of the 1950s and 1960s.3 The socialist experiments
in the Soviet Union, the Peoples Republic of China and elsewhere are also
difficult to understand from a Marxian perspective: these social formations
were characterised by structural exploitation, but they lacked consolidated
ruling classes. In other words, they did not constitute a real alternative to
capitalism, and they could, in many cases, be toppled relatively quickly. 4
This is of course related to the ineluctable question concerning the working
class as revolutionary subject. Why has it, until now, hardly lived up to the
hopes of Marx and the Marxists?
Here, I want to focus on this last question, but I can discuss only one
aspect of it, namely: what is the working class? What might a critique of the
political economy of labour look like that critically reviews the experiences
of the past five hundred years while moving beyond the Eurocentrism that
continues to dominate Marxism?
To begin with, we need to note that Marx neglected studying the
working class in favour of studying capital. Marx conceived of Capital as
the first part of a six-part work; the Book on Wage-Labour was to be
another such part, but it was never written. To be sure, there are some rough
indications of what Marx would have said in this book.5 Nevertheless, much
remains entirely unclear. The well-known British social historian Edward P.
Thompson rightly observed that Capital discusses the logic of capital, but
not capitalism; it neglects the social and political dimensions of history, the
anger and outrage that become apparent in class struggle. This anger and
outrage must remain incomprehensible for as long as one considers only the
closed system of economic logic. The human experience is neglected,
even though it expresses something essential:
Men and women also return as subjects, within this term not as
autonomous subjects, free individuals, but as persons
experiencing their determinate productive situations and
relationships, as needs and interests, and as antagonisms, and
Sternberg, Fritz. Der Imperialismus. Berlin: Malik, 1926; Baran, Paul A. and Sweezy,
Paul M. Monopoly Capital. An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order. New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1966.
4
The extensive debates on this question have been reconstructed in Marcel van der Linden,
Western Marxism and the Soviet Union. A Survey of Critical Theories and Debates since
1917 (Chicago: Haymarket, 2010).
5
Lebowitz, Michael. Beyond Capital: Marxs Political Economy of the Working Class.
Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Thompson, E.P. The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays. London: Merlin, 1978, p.164.
Marx, Karl. Value, Price and Profit. In Marx, K. and Engels, F. Collected Works. vol.
20. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985, p. 146.
8
Marx, Karl. Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft),
trans. with a foreword by Martin Nicolaus. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, p. 287.
9
Lebowitz, Michael. Following Marx: Method, Critique and Crisis. Leiden and Boston:
Brill 2009, p. 308. I will also be following Lebowitz in the sections that follow.
10
Marx, Karl. Capital. Vol. I, trans. Ben Fowkes. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976, p. 275.
11
Ibid., p. 655.
12
Marx, Karl. Grundrisse. Op.Cit., p. 817.
7
57
58
13
less important. Secondly, they involve the (often implicit) assumption that
workers are part of families who in principle also belong to the working
class. Sometimes it is assumed that there is a male breadwinner who earns
the income of the whole household, while other members of the family
perform at most subsistence labour; sometimes the possibility is recognized
that other family members can also contribute to household income.
Thirdly, all definitions assume that the working class is next to, or
counterposed to, other social classes, in particular the employers
(capitalists), the self-employed, the unfree, and so-called
lumpenproletarians (beggars, thieves, etc.).
All these descriptions emphasize structural, social-economic
characteristics. But the working class also has a subjective side, as shown by
its culture, mentality and collective action. E.P. Thompson accordingly
considered class as an outcome of experience, emerging out of those
socio-economic characteristics. Class, he argued, happens when some
men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and
articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as
against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed
to) theirs.16 The ways in which class happens can diverge strongly, and
are unpredictable: We can see a logic in the responses of similar
occupational groups undergoing similar experiences, but we cannot
predicate any law. Consciousness of class arises in the same way in different
times and places, but never in just the same way.17
Formation
In the early 21st century, wage labour has probably become the
second most prevalent form of work (after domestic subsistence-labour).
But wage labour is not a phenomenon of recent vintage. Wage labour has
been performed more or less sporadically for thousands of years. Originally
it concerned work activities without a permanent character, such as the work
of itinerant artisans, the service of military recruits or help with the harvest.
The New Testament provides a good example of casual wage labour with
the parable about the householder who went out early in the morning to
hire labourers for his vineyard. (Matthew 20)
16
Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Gollancz, 1963,
pp.8-9.
17
Ibid., p.9.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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Kocka, Jrgen. Problems of Working-Class Formation: The Early Years, 1800-1875. In:
Ira Katznelson and R. Zolberg, Aristide R. (eds), Working-Class Formation: NineteenthCentury Patterns in Western Europe and the United States. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1986, p. 282.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
19
20
van der Linden, Marcel. Workers of the World: Essays toward a Global Labor History.
Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008.
Linebaugh, Peter and Rediker, Marcus. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves,
Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon
Press, 2001.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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62
Allen, V.L. The Meaning of the Working Class in Africa. Journal of Modern African
Studies, 10, 2 (1972), p. 188.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
On the other hand, historical studies reveal that in the past, the
dividing line between chattel slaves, serfs, and other unfree subalterns taken
together and free wage-earners was rather vague at best. On the African
East Coast around 1900, for example, there lived quite a number of slaves
who:
worked as self-employed artisans or skilled workers, some of
whom had previously worked as day labourers but had learnt a
more lucrative trade. ... These self-employed slaves ... were
respected for their knowledge and thus commanded exceedingly
high prices in the market, but they were rarely for sale. With
almost the same status as freed slaves, a number of them
actually owned small garden plots, and occasionally even
slaves.22
Brazilian historians especially have pointed to the fluid dividing line
between free wage labour and chattel slavery, for example in the case of
the ganhadores (slaves-for-hire) who earned their own wage, part of which
they had to hand over to their owners.23 In South Asia other ambivalences
occur, for example in the case of indentured labourers (coolies) who were
employed in South Asia itself, but also in the Caribbean, Malaya, Natal, Fiji
and elsewhere. Their situation is sometimes described as a new form of
slavery, but at other times as nearly free wage labour. 24 In Australia,
after lengthy hesitations, labour historians have no difficulty anymore to
describe the numerous convict labourers originally settling in the country as
working class in the broad sense of the word, even though these workers
performed forced labour.25 And for Europe, the new research reveals that
many so-called free workers were really bonded labourers, far into the
19th century. Master-and-servant laws, apprenticeship arrangements, etc.,
ensured that workers were tied to their employers, and had significantly
22
23
24
25
Deutsch, Jan-Georg. Emancipation without Abolition in German East Africa c.18841914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 71-72.
Groundbreaking was the article by Lara, Silvia Hunold. Escradivo, cidadania e histria
do trabalho no Brasil. Projeto Histria, No. 16, February 1998, pp. 25-38. See also the
important case study by Reis, Joo Jos. The Revolution of the Ganhadores: Urban
Labour, Ethnicity and the African Strike of 1857 in Bahia, Brazil. Journal of Latin
American Studies, 29, 1997, pp. 355-393.
Tinker, Hugh. A New System of Slavery: The Export of India Labour Overseas, 18301920. London: Oxford University Press, 1974.
An excellent overview is provided by Roberts, David Andrew. The Knotted Hands that
Set Us High: Labour History and the Study of Convict Australia. Labour History
[Sydney], No. 100, May 2011, pp. 33-50.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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fewer legal rights than the literature previously suggested. In this context,
there has indeed been mention of industrial serfdom.26
26
See e.g. McKinlay, Alan. From Industrial Serf to Wage-Labourer: The 1937 Apprentice
Revolt in Britain. International Review of Social History. Vol. 31, 1, April 1986, pp.118. Comparative perspectives are offered in Steinfeld, Robert J. The Invention of Free
Labor. The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350-1870.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991; Hay, Douglas and Craven, Paul
(eds.). Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004 and in Stanziani, Alessandro Stanziani
(ed.). Le travail contraint en Asie et en Europe: XVII-XXe sicles. Paris: CNRS, 2010.
27
Marx, Karl. Capital, Vol. I. Op.Cit., p. 272.
28
Marx, Karl. Grundrissse. Op.Cit., p. 464.
29
Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. In: Marx, K. and Engels,
F. Collected Works, vol. 6. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976, p. 494.
30
Weber, Max. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1921, p. 96.
31
Backhaus, Wilhelm. Marx, Engels und die Sklaverei. Zur konomischen Problematik der
Unfreiheit. Dsseldorf: Schwann, 1974 ; de Sainte Croix, Geoffroy E.M. Karl Marx and
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
after the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865 and 21 years
before it was officially proclaimed in Brazil. Marx considered slavery a
historically backward mode of exploitation that would soon be a thing of the
past, as free wage labour embodied the capitalist future. He compared the
two labour forms in several writings. He certainly saw similarities between
them both produced a surplus product and the wage-labourer, just like the
slave, must have a master to make him work and govern him. 32 At the
same time, he distinguished some differences that overshadowed all the
common experiences they shared. Let me offer some brief critical comments
on them and indicate some doubts.
First: wage workers dispose of labour capacity, viz. the aggregate
of those mental and physical capabilities existing in the physical form, the
living personality, of a human being, capabilities which he sets in motion
whenever he produces a use-value of any kind33 and this labour capacity
is the source of value; the capitalist purchases this labour capacity as a
commodity, because he expects it to provide him with a specific service,
namely the creation of more value than it has itself. 34 The same is not true
of the slaves labour capacity. The slaveholder has paid cash for his
slaves, and so the product of their labour represents the interest on the
capital invested in their purchase.35 But since interest is nothing but a form
of surplus value, according to Marx,36 it would seem that slaves would have
to produce surplus value. And it is a fact that the sugar plantations on which
slave labour was employed yielded considerable profits, because the
commodity sugar embodied more value than the capital invested by the
plantation owner (ground rent, amortisation of the slaves, amortisation of
the sugar cane press, etc.). So is it really the case that only the wage worker
produces the equivalent of his/her own value plus an excess, a surplusvalue?37 Or is the slave a source of value as well?
Second: Marx states that labour power can
the History of Classical Antiquity. Arethusa, 8, 1975, pp. 7-41; Lekas, Padelis. Marx on
Classical Antiquity. Problems of Historical Methodology. (Sussex: Wheatsheaf, 1988);
Reichardt, Tobias. Marx ber die Gesellschaft der klassischen Antike. Beitrge zur
Marx-Engels-Forschung. New Series, 2004, pp. 194-222.
32
Marx, Karl. Capital, Vol. III. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981, p. 510.
33
Marx, Karl. Capital, I. Op.Cit. p. 270.
34
Ibid., p. 301.
35
Marx, Karl. Capital, III. Op.Cit., p. 762.
36
Rent, interest, and industrial profit are only different names for different parts of the
surplus value of the commodity, or the unpaid labour enclosed in it, and they are equally
derived from this source and from this source alone. Marx, Karl. Value, Price and
Profit. Op.Cit., p. 133.
37
Marx, Karl. Capital, I. Op.Cit., p. 317.
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appear on the market as a commodity only if, and in so far as, its
possessor, the individual whose labour-power it is, offers it for
sale or sells it as a commodity. In order that its possessor may
sell it as a commodity, he must have it at his disposal, he must
be the free proprietor of his own labour-capacity, hence of his
person.38
The future wage worker and the money owner meet in the market,
and enter into relations with each other on a footing of equality as owners of
commodities, with the sole difference that one is a buyer, the other a seller;
both are therefore equal in the eyes of the law.39 In other words: labour
power should be offered for sale by the person who is the carrier and
possessor of this labour power and the person who sells the labour power
offers it exclusively. Why should that be so? Why can the labour power not
be sold by someone other than the carrier, as for example in the case of
children who are made to perform wage labour in a factory by their parents?
Why can the person who offers (his or her own, or someone elses) labour
power for sale not sell it conditionally, together with means of production?
And why can someone who does not own his own labour power
nevertheless sell this labour power, as in the case of rented slaves, whose
owners provide them to someone else for a fee?40
Third: the wage worker embodies variable capital.
It both reproduces the equivalent of its own value and produces
an excess, a surplus value, which may itself vary, and be more
or less according to circumstances. This part of capital is
continually being transformed from a constant into a variable
magnitude. I therefore call it the variable part of capital, or more
briefly, variable capital.41
It is only because labour is presupposed in the form of wagelabour, and the means of production in the form of capital (i.e.
only as a result of this specific form of these two essential
agents of production), that one part of the value (product)
presents itself as surplus-value and this surplus-value presents
38
Ibid., p. 271.
Ibid., p. 271.
40
Marx was quite aware of this practice of renting slaves, but he drew no theoretical
conclusions from it. See for example: Marx, Capital, III. Op.Cit., p. 597: Under the
slave system the worker does have a capital value, namely his purchase price. And if he
is hired out, the hirer must first pay the interest on this purchase price and on top of this
replace the capitals annual depreciation.
41
Marx, Karl. Capital, I. Op.Cit., p. 317.
39
42
Marx, Karl. Capital, III. Op.Cit., p. 1021. This is why surplus labour appears in two very
different forms in these two cases. In the case of wage labour, the wage form eradicates
every trace of the division of the working day into necessary labour and surplus labour,
into paid labour and unpaid labour. Marx, Karl. Capital, I. Op.Cit., p. 680. By contrast,
in the case of slave labour, even the part of the working day in which the slave is only
replacing the value of his own means of subsistence, in which he therefore actually
works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All his labour appears as
unpaid labour. Ibid., p. 680.
43
Ibid., p. 377; the Grundrisse contains a similar passage. Op.Cit., pp. 489490.
44
Marx, Karl. Capital, III. Op.Cit., p. 597.
45
Marx, Karl. Capital, I. Op.Cit., p. 317.
46
Ibid., p. 293.
47
Ibid., p. 271.
48
Marx himself referred repeatedly to the analogy between rent and wage labour. He did so
most extensively in the Theories of Surplus Value, where he writes that the worker is
paid for his commodity (his labour capacity) only after he has finished working: It can
also be seen that here it is the worker, not the capitalist, who does the advancing, just as
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and a sale may appear insignificant, but it is not. As Franz Oppenheimer has
rightly noted:
When a sales contract is closed, the substance of the commodity
becomes the property of the other party, whereas when a lease
contract is closed, the other party merely purchases the right to
use the commodity; the seller only makes his commodity
available temporarily, without relinquishing ownership of it.49
When A sells B a commodity, B becomes the owner in lieu of A. But
when A leases B a commodity, A remains the owner and B merely receives
the right to use the commodity for a fixed term. The substance of the
commodity remains with A, whereas B receives its use and enjoyment.50
Thus, if wage labour is the leasing of labour power, the difference between a
wage worker and a slave does not consist in the definite period of time51
for which labour power is made available, but in the fact that in one case,
labour power is leased, while in the other it is sold. Why do we not find this
consideration in Marx? Presumably because it makes the process of value
creation appear in a different light. The substance of the value of labour
power is retained by the worker rather than being yielded to the capitalist.
Engels held that lease transactions are only a transfer of already existing,
previously produced value, and the total sum of values possessed by the
landlord and the tenant together remains the same after as it was before.52
Thus if wage labour were a lease relation as well, it could not create surplus
value.
Sixth: according to Marx, the rate of profit tends to decline because
the social productivity of labour increases constantly:
in the case of the renting of a house, it is not the tenant but the landlord who advances
use-value. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. Collected Works, vol. 32. Moscow:
Progress Publishers, 1989, p. 302; see also Marx, Capital, I. Op.Cit., p. 279: The price
of the labour-power is fixed by the contract, although it is not realized till later, like the
rent of a house. On this, see also Kuczynski, Thomas. Was wird auf dem Arbeitsmarkt
verkauft? In: van der Linden, Marcel and Heinz Roth, K. ber Marx hinaus. Op.Cit.
49
Oppenheimer, Franz. Die soziale Frage und der Sozialismus. Eine kritische
Auseinandersetzungmit der marxistischen Theorie. Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1912, p.120.
50
Differently from what Oppenheimer believed [...] only the labour capacity that is
intended for sale (e.g. that of the work ox, the slave) is a commodity, not that intended
merely for lease (Ibid., p. 121) , a lease contract also operates according to the logic of
the commodity; this is precisely why the leasing fee depends on the value of the leased
commodity.
51
Marx, Karl. Capital, I. Op.Cit., p. 271.
52
Engels, Friedrich. The Housing Question. In: Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. Collected
Works, vol. 23. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1988, p. 320.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
53
54
69
70
55
56
This led to a certain ambivalence: the wrong workers were and were not proletarians.
Hal Draper points this out and observes a certain ambivalence on the question whether
the lumpenproletariat is to be regarded as a part of the proletariat or not. Draper, Hal.
The Concept of the Lumpenproletariat in Marx and Engels. Etudes de Marxologie, 15,
1972, p. 2294. In The Class Struggles in France (1850) one can for instance read, that
the counterrevolutionary Mobile Guards belonged for the most part to the
lumpenproletariat, which in all big towns forms a mass sharply differentiated from the
industrial proletariat [...]. Just a few lines later, Marx writes, however, that the Paris
proletariat was confronted with an army, drawn from its own midst. Marx, Karl and
Engels, Friedrich. Collected Works, vol. 10. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978, p. 62.
Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In: Marx, Karl and Engels,
Friedrich. Collected Works, vol. 11. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1979, p. 149.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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58
71
72
A new concept
The implications are far-reaching. Apparently, there is a large class
of people within capitalism, whose labour power is commodified in various
ways. I would like to call this class the extended or subaltern working class.
Its members make up a very varied group: it includes chattel slaves,
sharecroppers, small artisans and wage earners. It is the historic dynamics of
this multitude that we should try to understand. We have to consider that
in capitalism there always existed, and probably will continue to exist,
several forms of commodified labour subsisting side by side.
59
60
61
Kiernan, Victor. Victorian London Unending Purgatory. New Left Review, 76, 1972,
pp. 73-90, at 82.
Bovenkerk, Frank. The Rehabilitation of the Rabble: How and Why Marx and Engels
Wrongly Depicted the Lumpenproletariat as a Reactionary Force. The Netherlands
Journal of Sociology, 20, 1, 1984, pp. 13-41.
See e.g. Breman, Jan. Wage Hunters and Gatherers. Search for Work in the Urban and
Rural Economy of South Gujarat. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 3-130.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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74
his house to the ground. For the next several weeks they refused
to budge from their mountain redoubt, where they passed time
by composing and singing songs of protest.
The miners returned only after mediation by a priest sent by the
bishop.
62
62
66
Varma, Nitin. Chargola Exodus and Collective Action in the Colonial Tea Plantatons of
Assam. SEPHIS e-magazine [http://sephisemagazine.org/issues/vol._3_2.pdf], 2, January
2007, p. 34.
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76
his article has been written, and it could hardly have been otherwise, on the
basis of the authors own research experience. As a historian I have been
studying the Brazilian working class, its organizations and forms of struggle
for many years now. I see history as being much more than a mere study of
the past, the science of men in time with its incessant urge to join the study
of the dead to that of the living, as Marc Bloch1 would have it; or Josep
Fontanas affirmation that all historical inquiries involve, in addition to a
reflection on the past, a distinct way of understanding the present (which he
defined as a political economics) and of taking a stance in the face of the
future (which he calls social project).2 That is why, particularly in the last
few years, I have been developing two study programs in parallel: one
directed at gaining an understanding of certain particular forms of workingclass formation in the peripheral conditions of a former slave-based colony
(which took me back to the second half of the 19th century and the
beginning of the 20th); and the other focused on an attempt to understand the
current pattern of the class struggle in contemporary capitalist society,
78
which means trying to get a clearer picture of the current profile of the
working class, especially in Brazils situation, as peripheral as ever.
What has made it possible, and to a great extent complementary, for
me to develop research programs with such widely separated time frames
has been a reflection on the working class founded in the conceptual sphere.
From that more strictly theoretical point of view, I have based myself on
two considerations that I will endeavor to develop in the course of this
exposition: it is necessary to get beyond the narrower concepts of working
class and arrive at a broader concept; and, that effort, in my view, can only
be successful if we take up, once more, Marx and Engels original
discussion of the working class, alongside the best elaborations of historical
materialism in the critical tradition produced in the 20th century. In doing
so, we should certainly not address them as if they were ready-made
responses to the challenges of historical research, but rather a valid set of
references which, provided they are duly updated and duly take into account
contemporary complexity, will continue to be the best we have available.
4
5
Ibid, p. 198.
Such considerations on the centrality of expropriations, albeit tracing out different
pathways, are consistent with similar concern displayed in Harveys portrayal of
contemporary accumulation considered by him to be driven by dispossession or again
with the emphasis Linebaugh places when highlighting the classic cycle: expropriation
exploitation expropriation. See Harvey, David. The new imperialism. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003. Linebaugh, Peter. The Magna Carta manifesto: liberties and
commons for all. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
79
80
6
7
Here I am using the World Banks figures available at: http://www.worldbank. org/
When no other comment accompanies them, the data presented are those of the Brazilian
Geography and Statistics Institute (Instituto Brasileiro ed Geografia e Estatstica
IBGE) which can be accessed at: www.ibge.gov.br.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
According to information
ped/metropolitana.xml#.
displayed
on
this
site:
http://www.dieese.org.br/
81
82
10
11
12
Ibid., p. 88.
Bensaid, Daniel. Os irredutveis: teoremas da resistncia para o tempo atual. So Paulo:
Boitempo, 2008, p. 36. (English version http://www.marxists.org/archive/
bensaid/2004/12/resist.htm)
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
83
84
13
In the 1844 Manuscripts, criticizing the way in which the national economy (his term
for characterizing what was up until then the classic political economy) Marx likened the
worker to little birds insofar as they only receive enough food to enable them to survive
and he defined the proletarian by the things he lacked, one who being without capital
and rent, lives purely by labour, and by a one-sided, abstract labour, is considered by
political economy only as a worker. Marx, Karl. Manuscritos econmico-filosficos.
So Paulo: Boitempo, 2004, p.30. (English version http://www.marxists.org
/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/wages. htm)
14
Marx, Karl. O capital, vol.1, Tomo II (captulo XXIV). So Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1984, p.
263. (English version http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm)
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
15
85
86
valorise the money of the entrepreneur of the knowledgemongering institution, is a productive worker18.
If the productive nature of the work and the worker is not defined by
the fact of employment in big industry (and, accordingly, not by real
subsumption either), neither is the working class itself presented as being
restricted to those undertaking productive work. On the contrary, it is the
condition of wage-earning proletarian that defines it. In the same text, Marx
points out that not all wage-earning workers are productive, but that even
those engaged in professions that were formerly endowed with an aura of
autonomy (such as doctors, lawyers and so on) were increasingly finding
themselves reduced to wage or salary-earning situations and from the
prostitutes to the kings were coming under the rules that govern the price
of wage-earning work.19
Here I will have recourse to an analysis made by Bensaid who,
commenting on the broad conception of class to be found in Capital,
endeavored to show how, on the basis of a vision of the whole, of the
general or amplified reproduction of capital as Marx defines it, there is no
reason to restrict the definition of class to productive work alone. Putting it
another way, there is no reason to seek to identify the working class only in
the processes of capitalist production but rather, it should be understood that
the formation of that class completes itself in the broader dimension of the
general reproduction of capital in all spheres and spaces in the work, in the
conditions of reproduction of life itself, and in the broadest spaces of
sociability in which the interests and visions of the world of the workers
confront those of capital.
We do not thus see in Marx any reductive, normative or
classificatory definition of classes, but a dynamic conception of
their structural antagonism, at the level of production,
circulation and reproduction of capital: classes are never defined
only at the level of the production process (the faceoff between
workers and employers in the enterprise), but determined by the
reproduction of the whole when the struggle for wages, the
division of labour, relations with the state apparatuses and the
world market enter into play. From this it is clear that the
productive character of labour that appears notably in Volume 2
18
Ibid., p. 76. Marx uses the same example of the schoolmaster to discuss productive work
in Capital (addressing the issue of real and absolute surplus-value)). Marx, Karl. O
capital, Vol. 1, Tomo II, Op. Cit., p. 105-106.
19
Ibid., p. 73.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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87
88
22
23
consciousness are always the last, not the first, stage in the real
historical process.24
That is something that enables us to understand Marx and Engels
reflections from the 1840s on as being produced by, and, increasingly
within, the movement of class formation and class consciousness itself, even
though the class in formation at the time was highly differentiated,
submitted to the most violent forms of exploitation, with no guarantees for
its legal rights in regard to undertaking work and in the most degrading
living conditions imaginable. So then, if the revolutionary potential of the
class that Marx discovered at the time did not depend on the existence of
great concentrations of wage-earning industrial workers, factory laborers,
with formal labour contracts and guaranteed rights, why then should it do so
now?
Before concluding this stage of the exposition I would like to
recuperate another endeavour to capture the new configuration of class in
the current state of capitalism made by Cuban philosopher Isabel Monal
who made use of Gramscis concept of subaltern classes/groups to propose a
broadening of its scope that would enable it to capture groups/movements
typified by their disaggregation, the absence of mature political awareness,
heterogeneity, multiplicity and so on.25 In the same vein she states that
this expanded concept of the subaltern would include exploited classes in
general, the whole set of the oppressed and the marginalized that for the
most part, play a role in social and civil society movements.26 Monal feels
that today the term subaltern is even more pertinent than in Gramscis
time, and its use would make it possible to go beyond the limits of the
concept of class as defined by Marx, insofar as the Gramscian category of
subaltern in that case would go beyond the social classes but at the same
time include them, and would remedy the lack of such a concept in Marx.27
To my mind, Monal attributes to Marx a much more closed concept
of the working class than he did in fact put forward and accordingly the
24
89
90
suggestions I have made so far have been much more closely aligned with
Antunes propositions when he defends the analytic validity of Marxs
concept today. I also feel that she makes too little distinction among the
ways in which Gramsci addresses the question of the subaltern classes of his
day (to him the term arose as an expression of the United Front to be formed
by factory workers and peasants), and the way he applies the term as a
category that facilitates an understanding of class configurations in precapitalist societies. In any event, Monals suggestion that an effort should be
made to understand the current phase as one of exacerbated class
heterogeneity or even heterogeneity among classes, and doing so by having
recourse to Gramscis concept of subaltern classes/group is inspiring.
Labour historians have been doing something very similar.
28
of the more determinist Marxist referential generally adopted has led a good
number of those historians to seek to situate southern hemisphere realities in
the same evolutionary stages, namely ancient slave-based, feudal and then
capitalist modes of production, that was supposed to be the key to
understanding and explaining European history. In more recent approaches,
understanding the ways in which forms of exploitation, tinged to some
extent by mechanisms of compulsion, played a functional role in capital
accumulation have obtained very positive results.30 Such refinement in the
researchers approaches, however, have also produced interesting fruits
from analysis focused on Europe and even on the very first industrial
capitalist economy ever, in England. Alessandro Stanziani, for example has
disseminated studies that demonstrate how the dominant idea of free
labour in most of Europe up until the middle of the 19th century was one of
service provision regulated by civil and criminal law and that the idea of
free and not free that we hold today in regard to labour relations only
came to be established as dominant ideas in the 20th century.31
This has been one of the central discussions involving labour
historians in various parts of the world and it has been generating a
movement in recent years in favour of the construction of a Global Labour
History. In the definition of one of the proposals main elaborators, it would
have the following features:
As regards methodology, an area of concern is involved, rather
than a well-defined theoretical paradigm to which everyone
most closely adhere. () As regards themes, Global Labour
History focuses on the transnational and indeed the
transcontinental study of labour relations and workers social
movements in the broadest sense of the word.() The study of
30
31
See for example the studies on Indian coolies submitted to service provision contracts
and legal sanctions for any breach of contract which virtually made them compulsory
workers on the tea plantations of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th
century. Mohapatra, Prabhu. Regulating informality. In Sabyasachi Bhattacharya,
Sabyasachi & Lucassen, Jan. (eds.), Workers in the informal sector: studies in labour
history, 1800-2000. Delhi: Macmillian, 2005. Behal, Rana. Power structure, discipline
and labour in Assam Tea Plantations under colonial rule. International Review of Social
History, 51, Supplement, 2006. In the case of the southern states of the United States,
Latin America and the Caribbean, see also Dale Tomichs interesting discussion of what
he calls the second slavery in the context of industrial capitalisms global expansion
which altered the productivity demands in American plantations. Tomich, Dale.
Through the prism of slavery: labour, capital and world economy. Boulder: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2004.
Stanziani, Alessandro. Introduction: Labour Institutions in a Global perspective, from
the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century. International Review of Social History, vol.
54, Part 3, December, 2009.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
91
92
32
van der Linden, Marcel. Workers of the world: essays toward a global labour history.
Leiden: Brill, 2008, pp. 6-7.
33
Ibid., p. 33.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
nevertheless he does define what, to him, is the common class base of all the
wide variety of subaltern workers: the coerced commodification of their
labour power.34
In some of my research activities in recent years, sharing a complex
problem with various other Brazilian historians35, I have studied historical
situations where the frontiers separating slave labour from free labour
seemed to be just as fluid as they are represented in Van der Lindens
definition. It was reading works like his that made me feel the need for a
more consistent reflection on how to address, in conceptual terms, the
process of working-class formation in the situation of the Latin American
colonial periphery or up until a short time before, an entirely colonial
situation as was the case with Brazil towards the end of the 19th century. The
first factor to take into consideration in this kind of situation is the way in
which the forms of exploitation and capitalist and precapitalist production
relations combine.
In a way, that question appeared to Marx to be essential when he
encountered the real working class movements taking place in countries on
the European periphery in the 1880s. Marx was very clear in explaining that
it was impossible to take the case of working-class formation in England as
a universally valid model insofar as he stated that the historical fatalism of
the conversion of the peasants into proletarians by separating them from the
means of production (particularly from the land) only found its full
expression in Western Europe, because it involved the transformation of
one form of private property into another form of private property.36 Marx
was placed face to face with the question of whether, in Russia, the
theorized role of the proletarian revolutionary subject would be at all valid
in view of the widespread predominance of the peasant. His answer took
into account the specificity of the Russian situation based on a collective
form of peasant agriculture, very different from the peasant who was
entitled to his own patch, as was the case analysed in the 18 Brumaire, and
34
Ibid., p.34.
Some examples may be found in Loner, Beatriz Ana. Construo de classe: operrios de
Pelotas e Rio Grande (1888-1930). Pelotas: Unitrabalho/EdUFPel; Cruz, Maria Ceclia
Velasco e. "Tradies negras na formao de um sindicato: sociedade de resistncia dos
trabalhadores em trapiche e caf, Rio de Janeiro, 1905-1930." Afro-sia, no. 24.
Salvador, 2000; Reis, Joo Jos. The revolution of the ganhadores: urban labour,
ethnicity and the African strike if 1857 in Bahia, Brazil. Journal of Latin American
Studies, 29, 1997. Mattos, Marcelo Badar. Escravizados e livres: experincias comuns
na formao da classe trabalhadora carioca. Rio de Janeiro: Bom Texto, 2008.
36
"Marx to V. I Zasulich in St. Petersburg (1881)", in Marx, K. & Engels, F. Selected
correspondence, 2a. ed. Moscow: Progress, 1965, p. 339-340.
35
93
94
furthermore, the Russian peasant was in contact with the first moments of
socialist agitation in that country, connected to the International movement
of the proletariat. In that context Marx and Engels envisioned the possibility
that the Russian commune did, indeed, have revolutionary potential and in
the preface of the Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto published in
1882 he commented that: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for
a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the
present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point
for a communist development.37
The classic figures of critical social thinking at the turn of the 19th to
the 20 century also considered the question insofar as they identified how
the uneven and combined nature of capitalist development in its global
expansion phase, imperialism, led to the parallel existence of archaic and
modern forms of production organization that acquired specific features in
relation to the process of capitalist industrial development in the first nations
that underwent it like England.38
th
37
38
39
Marx, K. & Engels, F. "Prefcio (segunda) edio russa de 1882". In: Obras
Escolhidas, vol 1. Lisboa: Progresso/Avante, 1982, p. 98.(English version http://www.
marxists.org/ archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm)
See in Lenin the idea of uneven growth, for example in El imperialismo, fase superior
del capitalism. Moscow: Editorial Progresso, 1982, p. 139.
Trotsky, Leon. Histria da revoluo russa. So Paulo: Sundermann, 2007, Tomo I, p.
21. (English version http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch01. htm) For a
recent discussion of the theory of uneven and combined development that includes
considerations on its developments made by authors like Novak and Mandel, see van
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
It was that same interpretive line that enabled Peruvian Marxist Jos
Carlos Maritegui to perceive Latin American specificities and propose a
political defense of the revolutionary potential of the indigenous element in
the socialist struggles of the Andean countries in the 1920s. In Mariteguis
view, the indigenous claims would be doomed to remain isolated and
manipulated by various forms of populism for as long as they insisted in
manifesting themselves in a manner restricted to ethnic, cultural or
educational aspects demanding political and economic expression by means
of their association to the question of the land. Recognizing the potential
that could stem from a change in the orientation of the movement so that it
decisively embraced its consanguinity with international proletarian
socialism, Maritegui explained that:
Faith in the renaissance of the Indian is not pinned to the
material process of Westernizing the Quechua country. The
soul of the Indian is not raised by the white mans civilization or
alphabet but by the myth, the idea, of the Socialist revolution.
The hope of the Indian is absolutely revolutionary. That same
myth, that same idea, are the decisive agents in the awakening of
other ancient peoples or races in ruin: the Hindus, the Chinese,
et cetera. Universal history today tends as never before to chart
its course with a common quadrant. Why should the Inca
people, who constructed the most highly-developed and
harmonious communistic system, be the only ones unmoved by
this worldwide emotion? The consanguinity of the Indian
movement with world revolutionary currents is too evident to
need documentation. I have said already that I reached an
understanding and appreciation of the Indian through
socialism.40
Thus, considering that capitalism operates expropriations and
exploitations in distinctly different ways according to the former realities it
confronts, then both Marxs perspective regarding the Russian peasants,
which inspired analysis that underscored the uneven and combined forms of
peripheral capitalism and the valorisation of the indigenous element in Latin
American social struggles present in Mariteguis discourse, far from
addressing the specificities of the situations deemed to be peripheral in
relation to the European/occidental capitalism as if they revealed absolute
peculiarities, instead, comprehend them in the context of a much broader
40
der Linden, Marcel. The Law of Uneven and Combined Development: Some
Underdeveloped Thoughts. Historical Materialism, 15, 2007,p. 145165.
Maritegui, Jos Carlos. Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality.
1928.(http://www.marxists.org/archive/mariateg/works/1928/essay02.htm)
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
95
96
41
43
44
Ibid., p. 160.
Badar Mattos, Marcelo. Escravizados e livres, Op.Cit. p. 21.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
97
98
45
Souza Martins, Jos de. O cativeiro da terra. 9 ed., So Paulo: Contexto, 2010.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
of the 19th century the number of slaves went steadily down but in 1849,
slaves and freedmen still made up 40% of the population of 266 thousand
inhabitants. According to the available research reports, in the citys
factories, at a time when the predominant system was still based on simple
piece work and the big companies (with over 600 employees) were merely
combinations of a set of smaller workshops, slaves were working side by
side with supposedly free individuals. In the streets, there was another
widely disseminated situation also found in other cities; a kind of slave-hire
scheme known as escravido de ganho whereby the slaves sold their
labour force in the urban labour market and paid a fixed daily or weekly
amount to their owners with many of them living entirely on their own
account, that is, they met all the costs of their own reproduction as a labour
force including food and, in many cases, even lodging.
What did it all signify? First, the enslaved workers had already been
previously expropriated so their conversion to the condition of proletarians
did not call for any new coercion of the state that would guarantee the
existence of the imperatives of the market as Ellen Woods thinking on
Thompsons work identified in the case of England.46 The coercion of the
state, in the case of Brazil, was to come into play afterwards, to guarantee
that those ex-slaves, already expropriated as they were, should remain
available as proletarians even if it were only in the condition of unemployed
or to engage in the worst paid forms of work. Corroborating this
interpretation, the turn of the century from the 19th to the 20th is clearly
marked by the intense repression of supposed idleness.
Given that slaves and free workers laboured side by side in the
factories and that survival was subordinated to market imperatives in the
case of slaves-for-hire, what we have then is a situation in which capital
appropriated surplus labour from workers still engaged in traditional forms
of production,47 even when such workers were still enslaved. As such, we
can state that what we have is a case of slave labour formally subsumed to
capital even if those subsumed were not entirely as free as birds.48
Thus, in the perspective adopted in the discussion up to this point,
the process of formation of the working class in 19th century Brazil would
46
Wood, Ellen. The origin of capitalism: a longer view. London: Verso, 2002, p. 65.
Ibid. p. 67.
48
It should be realized that Marx's expression was heavy with irony because the
proletarians were only free from any means of survival operated outside the confines
of the market and in fact compelled to transform their labour power into a marketable
item to sell in that same market.
47
99
100
49
50
101
102
51
52
The expression subjects of their own history has been widely used in recent Brazilian
historiography of slavery in an endeavor to emphasize the individual and collective
actions of slaves in their process of adaptation/confrontation of slavery and their quest
for freedom. See for exemple Chalhoub, Sidney. Vises da liberdade: uma histria das
ltimas dcadas da escravido na Corte. So Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1990.
Sen, Asok. Subaltern Studies: class, capital and community. In: Guha, Ranajit (ed.),
Subaltern Studies V. Writings on South Asian History and Society. Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1987
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
which Marx had, in fact, already suggested were part of the working class
itself.
I also drew attention to the fact that the concept of subaltern classes
in Gramsci can be applicable in more than one perspective. On the one
hand, in referring to the subaltern classes in a context where he is addressing
the subject of the complex capitalist societies of the 20th century, Gramsci
seems to be presenting it as the objective base which gave support to the
proposal for a United Front of workers and peasants, considered essential
for a revolution to occur in countries like Italy (as it was in Russia). It is a
category that in this case, in his contemporary context, allows Gramsci, with
far greater precision than would be permitted by employing the term the
masses, to discuss the process whereby class consciousness is raised from
its basis in common sense and in which a messianic vision of the world fed
by determinist readings of Marx are surpassed by the philosophy of praxis
in its most elaborate manifestation.53
The concept of subaltern classes also serves Gramsci well in
discussing the spontaneous and organized facets of the movements
conducted by those classes. Starting from an example in his personal
experience during the revolutionary strikes in Turin at the end of the 1910s
and beginning of the 1920s, Gramsci endeavors to demonstrate how the
organization that emerges as the most conscious sector of the subaltern
classes should depart from the spontaneous elements of its demonstration of
revolt and follow a program of intellectual and moral reform (in this case
a process of revolutionary consciousness enhancement) avoiding any
repudiation of spontaneity but at the same time not allowing it to enable
the struggles innate tendency to fragmentation to triumph.54
It is precisely this discussion of the tendency of the subaltern classes
to spontaneity and fragmentation, allied to the debate on forms of
consciousness, which enables us to understand the broader dimension in
regard to its historicity, that Gramsci attributes to the concept of subaltern
classes, using it for example when referring to the Roman slaves and the
medieval peasant submitted to the landlords. In that historical dimension,
what Gramsci proposes is a methodological pathway for analytic purposes,
sometimes in the form of a study plan that seeks to salvage the fragmented
and episodic history of those groups, attempting to identify any tendency
to unification in them that is continually interrupted by the activity of the
53
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the prision notebooks. London: The Eletric Book,
1999, p. 623 and ss.
54
Ibid., p. 131 and ss.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
103
104
55
Ibid., p. 206-07.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Linda Briskin
ts always stuck with me that nurses were like sleeping giants; sometimes
we dont recognize the potential and the power that we could have,
commented Marilyn Quinn, the president of the New Brunswick (Canada)
Nurses Union.1 The widespread militancy recounted in this article suggests
that nurses increasingly recognize their power, and are mobilizing
collectively to defend the public interest.2
This article is part of an extensive research project on nurses strikes
which explores nurse militancy with reference to professionalism and the
commitment to service; patriarchal practices and gendered subordination;
and proletarianization. These deeply-entangled trajectories have had a
106
Nurses strikes
In the context of the general decline of strike activity in many
Western countries, nurses have continued to take militant and successful
Briskin, L. The militancy of nurses and union renewal. Transfer: European Review of
Labour and Research, Vol. 17, No. 4, 2011, pp. 485-499.
Kumar, P. and Schenk, C. eds. Paths to Union Renewal: Canadian Experiences.
Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, Garamond and Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives, 2006.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Linda Briskin
The author has negotiated full access to the records for Canadian stoppages from 19462009 from the Workplace Information Directorate of Human Resources and Skills
Development Canada (HRSDC).
Hayes, L. Nurses on strike. In: The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, eds. A.
Brenner, B. Day, and I.l Ness, Armonk, NY, M.E. Sharpe, 2009, p. 712.
See for example, on the US, Ketter J. Nurses and strikes: A perspective from the United
States. Nursing Ethics, Vol. 4, No. 4, 1997, pp. 323-329; on Australia, Strachan G. Not
just a labour of love: Industrial action by nurses in Australia. Nursing Ethics, vol. 4, no.
4, 1997, pp. 294-302.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
107
108
Henttonen, E., LaPointe, K, Pesonen, S, and Vanhala, S. A stain on the white uniform:
The discursive construction of nurses' industrial action in the media. Gender, Work and
Organization. (doi:10.1111/j.1468-0432.2011.00556.x) document the reactions to this
strike in opinion pieces in the Finnish media.
9
Bessant J. Good women and good nurses: Conflicting identities in the Victorian nurses
strikes 1985-6. Labour History, vol. 63, 1992, pp. 155-173; McGauran, A. The results of
nurses industrial action in Ireland and Australia: A feminist interpretation. Proceedings
of the 1999 Conference of the Australasian Political Studies Association, 1999, pp. 537546; Hayward, S. and Fee, E. More in sorrow than in anger: The British nurses strike of
1988. International Journal of Health Services, vol. 22, no. 3, 1992, pp. 397-415;
Katsuragi, S. Better working conditions won by nurse wave action: Japanese nurses
experience of getting a new law by their militant campaign. Nursing Ethics, vol. 4, no. 4,
1997, pp. 313-322; Tabak, N. and Wagner, N. Professional solidarity versus
responsibility for the health of the public: Is a nurses strike morally defensible? Nursing
Ethics, vol. 4, no. 4, 1997, pp. 283-293; Clarke, J. and ONeill, C. An analysis of how
the Irish times portrayed Irish nursing during the 1999 strike. Nursing Ethics, vol. 8, no.
4, 2001, pp. 350-359; Brown, G., Greaney, A., Kelly-Fitzgibbon, M., and McCarthy, J.
The 1999 Irish nurses strike: Nursing versions of the strike and self-identity in a general
hospital. Journal of Advanced Nursing, vol. 56, no. 2, 2006, pp. 200-208; Cristovam, M.
Nurses strike for career path restructuring. The European Industrial Relations
Observatory EIRO Online, 28 Feb 1999. <http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/1999/02
/inbrief/pt9902131n.htm>; Lutua, K. The Fiji nurses strike. In: The 2006 Military
Takeover in Fiji: A Coup to End All Coups? eds. J. Fraenkel, S. Firth and B. Lal.
Australia: Epress-Australian National University, 2009. http://epress.anu.edu.au?p=7451
10
Johnston, P. Success While Others Fail: Social Movement Unionism and the Public
Workplace. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 216.
11
Ibid., p. 213.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Linda Briskin
12
Briskin, L. Beyond the average and the aggregate: Researching strikes in Canada. In:
Striking Numbers: New Ways in Strike Research, eds. S. van der Velden. Amsterdam:
The International Institute of Social History, Research Paper 50, 2012, pp. 137-163. This
research has also made extensive use of the Seachange website which keeps track of
some newspaper coverage of nurses strikes. http://seachange.wbumpus.com/
13
Hibberd, Op. Cit., p. 588.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
109
110
14
National Health Expenditure Trends data Tables, Table B.4.5, Canadian Institute of Health
Information https://secure.cihi.ca/estore/productFamily.htm?locale=en&pf=PFC1671
15
Mackenzie, H. and Michael R. The Sustainability of Medicare. Ottawa: The Canadian
Federation of Nurses Unions, 2010. http://www.nursesunions.ca/sites/default/
files/Sustainability.web_.e.pdf
16
Clark, P. and Clark, D. Union strategies for improving patient care: The key to nurse
unionism. Labor Studies Journal, vol. 31, no. 1, 2006, p. 51.
17
Canadian Institute of Health Information: Data Table B RN1, 2009.
http://www.cihi.ca/cihi-extportal/internet/en/document/spending+and+health+workforce/
workforce/nurses/stats_nursing_2009
18
http://www.sun-nurses.sk.ca/History/neg_99_pamphlet.pdf
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Linda Briskin
19
http://www.cna-aiic.ca/en/about-cna/
Globe and Mail, 13 July 1999 and 10 February 2000.
21
Ibid.
20
22http://www.nursesunions.ca/sites/default/files/2012.backgrounder.nursing_workforce.e_0.
pdf
Valiani, S. Valuing the Invaluable: Rethinking and respecting caring work in Canada.
Ontario Nurses Association Research Series, Research Paper No. 1, 2011, p. 7.
http://www.ona.org/documents/File/pdf/ONAResearchSeries_ValuetheInvaluable_05052
011.pdf
24
McPherson, K. Bedside Matters: The Transformation of Canadian Nursing, 1900-1990.
Toronto: Oxford, 1996.
25
Stinson and Wagner, quoted in Mansell, D. and Dodd, D. (2005). Professionalism and
Canadian nursing. In: On All Frontiers. Four Centuries of Canadian Nursing, eds. C.
Bates, D. Dodd and N. Rousseau. Canada: University of Ottawa Press, 2005, p. 198.
26
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/07/03/ottawa-nurses-in-public-servicewin-150-million-dollar-settlement.html
23
111
112
27
Palmer, B. Working Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 18001991 (2nd ed). Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1992, p. 359-60.
28
Kelan, E. and Nentwich, J. The value of seeing gender as a doing. In: Equality,
Diversity and Inclusion at Work. A Research Companion, ed. M. Ozbilgin. Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009, pp. 138 and 141.
29
Ibid.
30
Armstrong, P., Armstrong, H. and Scott-Dixon, K. Critical To Care: The Invisible
Women in Health Services. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008, p. 93.
31
Ibid., p. 95.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Linda Briskin
32
113
114
for a 15 percent wage increase. Explicit attention was drawn to the issue of
womens lower pay, with a demand for mens wages for womens
occupations.40 In 2012, nurses in India created a new union with 400
branches in just two months. They went on an indefinite strike for an 80
percent wage increase. It lasted for 117 days.41
Feminization
Statistical data on the Canadian labour market reveal a significant
trend toward feminization. Feminization speaks to demographic profiles: the
feminization of work (more part-time, low paid and often precarious jobs,
employment patterns associated with womens work), the feminization of
the workforce (increasing numbers of women workers), the feminization of
union density (higher percentage of unionized women), and the concomitant
feminization of union membership (a greater proportion of union members
who are women).
Unlike density declines experienced in countries like the US and the
UK, union density in Canada has remained relatively stable. However, since
2004, the unionization rate for women has been slightly higher than for
men. In 2011, the rate was 31 percent for women and 28 percent for men; 52
percent of union members were women and 60 percent of union members
work in the public sector. In the public sector where women are clustered,
75 percent of workers have union coverage compared to only 17.5 percent
in the private sector.42 Somewhat similar patterns can be found in many
other countries.43
These demographic transformations in work, the workforce, union
density and union membership set the stage for the feminization of strikes,
that is, those involved in strikes are more likely to be women. Although
statistics are not available that demonstrate the exact proportion of women
and men involved in any particular strike, the growth and increasing
40
Jrgensen, C. Longest strike in public sector ends with pay settlement. The European
Industrial Relations Observatory EIRO Online, 29 September 2008.
http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2008/04/articles/DK0804029I.htm
41
Indian nurses start indefinite strike. Posted 2 Feb 2012. http://libcom.org/blog/indiannurses-start-%E2%80%98indefinite%E2%80%99-strike-02022012
42
Uppal, S. Unionization. Perspectives on Labour and Income. Ottawa: Statistics Canada
[Catalogue no. 75-001-x], 2011.
43
See for example on the EU, <http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/studies/
tn0904019s/tn0904019s.htm#hd2>; on the UK, <http://www.worker-participation.eu/
National-Industrial-Relations/Countries/United-Kingdom/Trade-Unions> and on the US,
<http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm>.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Linda Briskin
44
115
116
Gendering militancy
The feminization of strikes raises questions about gender-specific
strike tactics. Little research addresses this issue and the tapestry of gender,
sector and industry would require considerable untangling.52 Such an
examination also needs to be grounded in a materialist social construction
approach which recognizes that such strategies emerge from womens lived
experiences at work, in households and as part of communities rather than
from any narrow biological, essentialist or natural imperatives.53
Narratives on nurses strikes do offer a suggestive framework for exploring
the gender-specific character of militancy. First, strike issues often take
specific account of gendered realities. For example, the Danish nurses
strike of 2008 drew explicit attention to womens lower pay, with a demand
for mens wages for womens occupations. 54 Second, nurses use tactics
which reflect gendered realities. In that same strike, the nurses in Holstebro
handed out a recipe for baking home-made bread, with a lump of yeast and
talked to members of the public face to face. We need a rise in our pay in
the same way that yeast rises bread, to the level of mens wages so we can
afford to eat bread, and care for and look after your elderly, children and
chronically ill family, relatives and friends.55
Third, attention is inevitably drawn to the fact that the strikers are
women. In her narrative of the fifty-day strike by nurses in Victoria
(Australia), Bessant points to the significance accorded to gender in this
struggle. In Australian labour history it would be hard to find an equivalent
event where a large group of women challenged a male-dominated
government, a male-dominated industrial relations system, a maledominated trade union establishment It became a conflict dominated by
the gender of participants.56
Finally, womens strikes, and certainly strikes by nurses challenge
commonsense views that women workers are passive, and unwilling to take
52
Linda Briskin
strike action. The example of the Fiji nurses is a case in point. The Fiji
Nurses Association (FNA) went on strike in 2000 and 2005, seeking
promised and deserved salary increases of up to 27 percent, and
improvements in working conditions. In 2007, the year following a military
coup, Fijian nurses went on a sixteen-day strike with an 89 percent strike
mandate. Despite its lack of success, it offers an extraordinary example of
persistence and militancy. Kuini Lutua, the general secretary of the FNA
and a key leader in the strike noted: Because many of our members were
married to members of the security forces, they might face severe pressure
to back down; but the word from many of them was they became nurses
first and got married later. In talking to the media, she pointed to the vast
imbalance between the work we did and the amount we were paid. The Fiji
Human Rights Commission director Shaista Shameem replied that the right
to life of patients, sick people and the elderly was more important than the
right to strike to which Lutua replied the right to life was the
responsibility of the government, not of the nurses.57
This fearlessness is reminiscent of earlier strikes by women workers.
The 1911 comment of Helen Marot of the Womens Trade Union League in
New York City about the 1909 strike of shirtwaist makers is resonant with
this rich tradition:
The feature of the [shirtwaist makers] strike which was as
noteworthy as the response of thirty thousand unorganized
workers, was the yielding and uncompromising temper of the
strikers. This was due not to the influence of nationality, but to
the dominant sex [W]e have now a trade-union truism that
women make the best strikers The shirt-waist makers
strike was marked by complete self-surrender to a cause,
emotional endurance, fearlessness and willingness to face
danger and suffering.58
In fact, the defiance of the Fijian nurses prompted 10,000
government workers from other public sector unions who also faced pay
cuts following the coup to join them: The Fijian Teachers Association
(FTA), the Fiji Public Employees Union, and the Viti National Union of
Taukei Workers walked off the job on 2 August, though without the same
57
58
117
118
solidarity or unity of purpose as the nurses; the teachers called off their
strike within a day and other workers held out for only a week.59
The labour militancy of women not only challenges misconceptions
about women workers, but also masculinist assumptions still deeplyembedded in union culture. In focusing on the militancy of women, the
associations of militancy with men, masculinity and manliness are
problematized.60 Such associations weaken the ability of unions to organize
the unorganized in sectors where women work, and to address the concerns
of the increasing proportions of union members who are women.61 Strikes
of mostly women also gender the public imagination by contesting the
commonsense connection of labour militancy to blue collar men.
59
Fraenkel, J., Firth, S. and Lal, B. eds. The 2006 Military Takeover in Fiji: A Coup to End
All Coups? Australia: Epress-Australian National University, 2009, p. 253.
http://epress.anu.edu.au?p=7451
60
Briskin, L. Gendering Labour Militancies. Paper presented at the Gender, Work and
Organization Conference, Keele University, UK, 2007b.
61
Ledwith, S. Gender politics in trade unions: The representation of women between
exclusion and inclusion. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, vol. 18,
no. 2, 2012, pp. 185-199; Rooks, D. The cowboy mentality: Organizers and occupational
commitment in the new labor movement. Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2003,
pp. 33-62; Whitefield, P., Alvarez, S. and Emrani, Y. 2009. Is there a womens way of
organizing? Genders, unions, and effective organizing. Research Studies and Reports.
Cornell University ILR School Paper 26, 2009. http://digitalcommons.ilr. cornell.edu/
reports/26
62
Quoted in Brown et al., Op. Cit., p. 205.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Linda Briskin
63
119
120
69
Jennings, K. and Western, G. A right to strike? Nursing Ethics, vol. 4, no. 4, 1997, p.
281.
70
McKeown, M., Stowell-Smith, M. and Foley, B. Passivity vs. militancy: A Q
methodological study of nurses' industrial relations on Merseyside (England). Journal of
Advanced Nursing, vol. 30, no. 1, 1999, p. 146.
71
Brown et al. Op. Cit., p. 205.
72
Quoted in Jennings and Western, Op. Cit., p. 281.
73
Coulter, R. Alberta nurses and the illegal strike of 1988. In: Women Challenging
Unions: Feminism, Democracy and Militancy, eds. L. Briskin and P. McDermott.
Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1993, p. 56.
Although not specifically about nurses, research on the 1981 illegal strike of hospital
workers (housekeepers, lab technicians, dietary workers, nursing assistants, and
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Linda Briskin
maintenance workers) in Ontario (Canada), over 75 per cent of whom were women, is
revealing. The bond to care-giving work, loyalty to patients, and service orientation
created a pressure to strike. The need to protect standards impelled women to strike.
Women interviewees were asked if they were concerned about the level of care patients
would receive during the strike. The most common response involved a defense of the
strike in maintaining health standards. Typically the hospital worker commented: Its
them thats wrecked it for people, not us. I cant take care of anyone the way its set up.
Thats what I wantto get things back (RNA, General) (emphasis in original). White,
J. Hospital Strike: Women, Unions and Public Sector Conflict. Toronto: Thompson
Publishers, 1990. p. 70.
74
Hayes, Op. Cit., p. 712-3.
75
Mador, J. After the nurses strike, what's next? Minnesota Public Radio, 11 June 2010.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/06/11/nurses-nextsteps/
76
Lee, T. Minnesota nurses officially ratify new three year contract with hospitals. MedCity
News, 7 July 2010. http://medcitynews.com/2010/07/minnesota-nurses-officially-ratifynew-three-year-contract-with-hospitals/
77
Johnston, Op. Cit., p. 20-21.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
121
122
78
Ibid. See also Bach, S. and Givan, R. Public service unionism in a restructured public
sector. In: Union Organization and Activity, eds. J. Kelly and P. William. New York:
Routledge, 2004.
79
Haiven, L. The State and Nursing Industrial Relations: The Case of Four Western
Canadian Nurses Strikes. Unpublished paper, 1991, p. 8.
80
Gindin, S. and Hurley, M The public sector: Searching for a focus. Socialist Project EBulletin No. 354, 15 May 2010, p. 2. http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/ 354.php
81
Quoted in Laggan, Op. Cit.
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82
123
124
really out here about patient safety, our patient staffing ratio and being able
to deliver the best possible care that we can for patients and their families.
86
The strike also focused on the troubling practice of floating nurses to
different units that demand medical expertise they do not have. In May
2011, 1100 Los Angeles nurse staged a one-day action to protest inadequate
staffing ratios.87
In Sept 2011, 17,000 nurses went on a co-ordinated one-day strike at
34 hospitals in Northern California, the largest strike in nursing history.88
Many were on sympathy strikes with the National Union of Healthcare
Workers (NUHW). The health care hospital chains, Kaiser and Sutter,
demanded benefit cuts for health care staff, despite making substantial
profits (for example, Kaiser netted $2 billion in 2010). Ann Gaebler, a
neonatal intensive care nurse at Sutters Alta Bates Summit Medical Center
in Berkeley, said: Eliminating paid sick leave is akin to forcing nurses to
work while sicka dangerous prospect in the nursing world.89 Bay Area
Sutter nurses were also protesting the companys attempts to close
hospitals in low-income areas, while shifting profitable services to more
affluent neighborhoods. Their picket signs read, Community Care, Not
Corporate Profits, and Some Cuts Don't Heal. Vicki Theocharis, a nurse
in the hospital's oncology unit said: We're not just here for money. We
want to take care of the patients, and it almost feels like we're being
penalized for doing it.90 Oakland Childrens Hospital RN Martha Kuhl
commented, Nurses will never be silenced in standing up for our patients
and our communities.91
In December 2011, 6000 nurses staged a one-day strike at seven
hospitals to protest the erosion of quality of care and cuts to patient
86
Over 1,000 nurses strike at Kaiser L.A. Medical Center. Ktla News, 2 March 2011.
http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-nurses-strike,0,7869089.story
87
Kaiser Permanente nurses stage one-day walkout over working conditions. LA Times, 18
May 2011.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/05/kaiser-permanente-nurses-stage-oneday-walkout-over-working-conditions-1.html
88
Traywick, C. and Konstantinovsky, M. Oakland nurses march and strike in protest of
benefit cuts. Oakland North,
23 September 2011. http://oaklandnorth.net/2011/09/23/oakland-nurses-march-and-strikein-protest-of-benefit-cuts/
89
Ibid.
90
Sudhin Thanawal, S. and Chea, T. Nurses at dozens of California hospitals strike.
Common Dreams, 22 September 2011. https://www.commondreams.org/headline/
2011/09/22-7
91
Winslow, C. CNA Joins NUHW In biggest healthcare strike ever. Beyondchron, 26
September 2011. http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=9548
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Linda Briskin
Martinez, M. and Weisfeldt, S. 6,000 nurses strike in California. CNN U.S., 22 December
2011. http://articles.cnn.com/2011-12-22/us/us_california-nurses-strike_1_charles-idelsonnational-nurses-united-california-nurses-association?_s=PM:US
93
Connell, T. 6,000 Bay area nurses on one-day strike. AFL-CIO NOW, 22 December
2011. http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Organizing-Bargaining/6-000-Bay-Area-Nurses-onOne-Day-Strike
94
Ibid.
95
National Nurses Movement. Nurses fight back against corporate greed. Daily Kos,13
June 2012 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/13/1099845/-Nurses-Fight-BackAgainst-Corporate-Greed
96
Quan, H. More than 4,000 Bay Area nurses go on strike. CBS San Francisco,13 June
2012. http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/06/13/more-than-4000-bay-area-nurses-goon-strike/
97
Winslow, Op. Cit.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
125
126
Gag orders
An emerging employer response to the politicisation of caring and
nurse militancy is what Philadelphia nurses called a gag order during their
month-long strike at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia in 2010.
The strike began on 31 March 2010 after the 1000 nurses and 500 other
allied-health workers represented by the Pennsylvania Association of Staff
Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) voted 1,051 to 7 to reject the
hospitals offer. Although familiar issues were critical in this strike wages,
benefits, staffing ratios, attacks on union rights the non-disparagement
clause which came to be known as the gag clause was central: The
Association, its officers, agents, representatives and members shall not
publicly criticize, ridicule or make any statement which disparages Temple,
or any of its affiliates or any of their respective management officers or
medical staff members.100 Put on the bargaining table by the hospital
98
Marinucci, C. Nurses union becomes potent political force. San Francisco Chronicle, 24
Nov 2010 http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Nurses-union-becomes-potent-politicalforce-3244804.php
99
Ibid.
100
Mannix M. Until the gag clause is removed, the Temple nursing strike IS about patient
safety.
Philadelphia
Public
Health
Examiner,
3
April
2010.
http://www.examiner.com/public-health-in-philadelphia/until-the-gag-clause-isremoved-the-temple-nursing-strike-is-about-patient-safety
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Linda Briskin
101
Piette B. Striking Temple University nurses say: We wont back down! Workers
World, 31 March 2010. http://www.workers.org/2010/us/temple_0804/
102
Quoted in nationalnursesmovement, 2010.
103
Quoted in Piette, Op. Cit.
104
Quoted in nationalnursesmovement, 2010.
105
Thomson, G. Nurses feel chill of conduct code: Union sees McCarthyism, attempt to
muzzle health-care workers. Edmonton Journal, 14 July 2009. David Harrigan, the
director of labour relations for UNA commented: If the government, or Alberta Health
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
127
128
Services, announces that they are going to close a facility or they are going to close
some operating theatres, should nurses not be allowed to speak out about that? 13 July
2009.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2009/07/13/calgary-nurses-codeconduct-alberta-health.html
106
http://labornotes.org/2011/09/23000-strike-giant-california-hospital-chains
107
Peirce, J. 2003. Canadian Industrial Relations (2nd ed). Toronto: Prentice Hall, 2003, p.
273. About German nurses, Benn-Rohloff (1997: 340) comments: Compared with the
industrial sector, it is almost impossible to hurt the employers financially, because most
hospitals are directly or indirectly owned by the Government. Therefore, to win a strike
it is necessary to have public opinion on one's side and involve the public in raising the
pressure. Benn-Rohloff , N. Strikes - an appropriate action for health care employees?
A personal perspective. Nursing Ethics, vol. 4, no. 4, 1997, p. 340.
108
O'Brien, T. Targeting Tories: How the Nova Scotia nurses won. Our Times, vol. 21, no.
3, 2002, p. 28.
109
The poll was conducted for Sympatico / MSN by Ipsos Reid.
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Canada-Speaks-When-it-Comes-toProfessions-Whom-do-we-Trust-631793.htm
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Linda Briskin
2009 poll found that three out of four Canadians would choose increasing
the number of nurses over a tax cut. The majority also opposed government
increasing the number of patients nurses must care for.110
The convergence of professionalism, concerns about the public
interest and broad-based campaigns by and for nurses, have created the
conditions for strong public support of nurses when they go on strike. For
example, during the 1988 UK nurses strike, in a national public opinion
poll, 85 percent supported a substantial pay increase for nurses, and a
majority supported nurses striking for more pay. Encouraged by the
strength of feeling and tremendous public support the health service
unions planned a national day of demonstrations Between 43,000 and
100,000 people marched together in London, with 50,000 in Glasgow, and
large numbers elsewhere.111 During the 2007 Fiji nurses strike, the Fiji
Womens Rights Movement asked the country to support its striking nurses
nurses provide an invaluable service for Fijis people, but are underpaid
and undervalued.112
Perhaps the longest sustained struggle of nurses occurred in Japan
an intensive campaign by Japan Federation of Medical Workers Unions
(Nihon lroren) called the Nurse Wave. It began in 1989 and lasted for
three years. The nurses demands included an increase in the numbers of
nursing staff, the regulation of night shifts, the implementation of a five-day
working week everywhere, a fair appraisal of nurses work, and better
vocational training. The campaign combined the movement for better
working conditions and status of nurses, and the public movement for better
health care, [and] gained increasing popular support and spread nationwide.
During the first year of the struggle, street demonstrations and
rallies by nurses dressed in white were staged In the third
year the movement shifted its focus to the demand for a
national policy for increasing the numbers of nursing personnel
Within 10 months, 5,400,000 signatures were gathered within
the country. After three years of campaigning, they won the
110
Canadians want government to address nursing shortage, health care, in these tough
economic
times,
new
poll
finds.
Reuters,
8
June
2009.
http://
www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/08/idUS68607+08-Jun-2009+MW20090608
111
Hayward and Fee, Op. Cit., p. 404.
112
Fiji womens rights movement supports striking nurses. Radio New Zealand
International, July 25, 2007
http://seachange.wbumpus.com/node/11583
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
129
130
113
Linda Briskin
118
Heuser, M. The way forward in the Polish doctors and nurses strike. World Socialist
Web Site, 19 July 2007. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul2007/pola-j19.shtml
119
Haiven, 1991, Op. Cit., p. 14. see also Coulter, Op. Cit.
120
Haiven, 1991, Op. Cit., p. 17.
121
Henttonen, et. al, Op. Cit., p. 13.
122
OBrien, Op. Cit., p. 25.
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132
Not only have nurses used strikes as vehicle for defending patient
care but also broad-based and on-going campaigns which may well help to
explain public support for nurses when they do go on strike. For example,
National Nurses United (NNU), the largest union of registered nurses in the
United States has been instrumental in the campaign for a financial
transaction tax (FTT), sometimes called the Robin Hood Tax. They were
part of a four-continent contingent of nurses which joined marchers
protesting G-20 austerity measures in France in November 2011. RoseAnn
DeMoro, NNU executive director commented: I'm incredibly proud of the
nurses internationally for their global advocacy for their patients and
society. The nurses don't ever give up on people and we won't give up on
this cause. This action was a follow-up to a 60-city protest by US nurses in
September 2011. In May 2012, nurses continued their rally for the Robin
Hood Tax in Chicago as part of the protest at the Nato Security Alliance.
This campaign is part of what the NNU calls a main street contract for the
American people which seeks to counter the corporate agenda with union
and community demands for job creation, guaranteed health care, secure
retirements, and decent education.123 We see a better world is possible,
and we know how to pay for it. Our way as patient advocates, as engaged
community members, as global citizens is clear: organize, organize,
organize.124
Conclusion
This article has situated nurse militancy within the context of health
care restructuring and neoliberalism, the gendered construction of nursing
work, the feminization of union density and of strikes, and gendered
militancy. The widespread mobilization of nurses and the discourses which
frame this militancy support a claim for the politicization of caring, that is, a
recognition of the collective responsibility for caring, and the impact of
deteriorating conditions of nursing work on quality care; the rejection of
essentialist claims that women are responsible for caring work by virtue of
being women; the demand that the skills involved in caring work be
recognized and rewarded; and the willingness to mobilise collectively to
these ends.
123
Gaus, M. Nurses join international push for bank trade tax. Labornotes, 22 June 2011.
http://labornotes.org/2011/06/nurses-join-international-push-bank-trade-tax
124
http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/pages/ncha
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Linda Briskin
125
133
134
I would like to thank Rachel Hurst for her work in the newspaper archives, and Kristine
Klement whose work on the HRSDC data has been invaluable. This research was partly
funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and
the Faculty of Arts at York University.
128
Terry Brotherstone
This essay revisits two important British workers struggles that took place
in the decade of the neoliberal Conservative governments of Margaret
Thatcher: the coalminers strike of 1984-5 and the offshore oil workers
industrial actions of 1989-90. Both involved energy workers, and in the
particular cases I examine were based in Scotland. And both, in their
different ways, still resonate today. This is particularly true, I argue, if the
study of these events is understood as part of a critical discourse about the
UKs neoliberal project and the collapse of its triumphalist phase in the
global financial crisis that began in 2007-8; and if it is inspired by the need
to recover, through critique rather than uncritical celebration, the sense of
practical relevance and political optimism that underpinned the development
of British labour history in the 1960s.
My linking of these two episodes in the class struggles during Britain
in the socially divided 1980s is in part influenced by personal experience.1
The offshore workers onshore strike headquarters was in Aberdeen
Scotlands most remote major city, situated on the North Sea littoral
where I was lecturing in history at the UKs fifth oldest university. I knew a
number of the strikers personally and was in contact with them regularly
My interest in labour history began with research on the early twentieth-century labour
militancy in Scotland (Red Clydeside). My experience in the labour movement
includes a lay leadership role in the University and College Union Scotland (UCUS) and
a brief spell on the General Council of the Scottish Trades Union Congress.
136
The papers were NewsLine and then Workers Press (which ran from 1985 to 1996).
Brotherstone, T. and Pirani, S. Were There Alternatives?: movements from below in the
Scottish coalfield, 1981-1985. Critique, nos. 36-37, Glasgow, 2005. For recent work on
the miners strike, see references in Phillips, J.Collieries and Communities: the miners
strike in Scotland, 1984-1985, Scottish Labour History, vol. 45 (2010) and more
recently in his Collieries, Communities and the Miners Strike in Scotland, 1984-85.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012. Taylor, A. The NUM and British
Politics, Vol. II, 1969-1995. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005 offers a narrative stressing
regional diversity, but its focus is on the high politics of the NUM and its relations with
the state. The most recent general account, although it is not without some new material,
sticks to the conventional thesis criticised below: see Beckett, F. and Hencke, M.
Marching to the Fault Line: the 1984 miners strike and the death of industrial Britain.
London: Constable, 2009.
4
Phillips, J. The Industrial Politics of Devolution. Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2007.
3
Terry Brotherstone
new discourse about class struggle in Scotlands recent history.5 And the
miners strike, decisive though it was, was not the endpoint it sometimes
appears as in the literature. Such a discourse needs to encompass, amongst
other lesser known struggles, the later offshore oil workers campaign for
trade-union recognition and enforceable safety standards drawing it out
from the specialist literature and locating it within the mainstream of
historical interpretation.6
II
That the Thatcher years were a key period in the contemporary
history of Britain is uncontroversial. A form of social-democratic
consensus had underpinned national politics since the establishment of the
welfare state in the latter 1940s and provided the logic for Labour
governments to return to office in 1964, 1966 and again (twice) in 1974
after, from 1970 to 1974, a highly problematic Conservative interlude under
Edward Heath, whose attempts to bring the trade unions under greater
legislative control ended with defeat in a general election the prime minister
called in an unsuccessful attempt to mobilise public support in his
governments battle against striking mineworkers. The ensuing Labour
governments, first under Harold Wilson and then (from 1976) James
Callaghan, temporarily stabilised relations with the trade unions through a
series of agreements with their major leaders. But the governments
acceptance, late in 1976, of an International Monetary Fund loan conditional
on public-spending cuts led to a resurgence of the labour militancy that had
played a major part in defeating Heath, and, in effect, marked the end of the
post-war, welfarist consensus.
The discovery of oil in the North Sea in 1969 and the encouragement
to produce it rapidly engendered by the world oil-price crisis of 1973
137
138
seemed to offer the possibility of revenues that could finance socialdemocratic renewal; but in the event, the oil came substantially on stream
only after the 1979 election that brought Thatcher to office. Rather than
being devoted to industrial and social renewal, the oil revenues helped to
sustain the first Thatcher government as it felt its way towards the
implementation of a full-blown neoliberal agenda as its prescription for
reversing national decline. From being a model of a capitalist society
sustained by welfarist social democracy, Britain became the western
European pioneer of aggressive neoliberalism.
The oil revenues, I have argued elsewhere, played a key part in this
process.7 Without this windfall,8 the Thatcher governments programme
of liberalisation of the financial sector, industrial closures, privatisation,
and attacks on trade unions involving mass unemployment, the destruction
of working-class communities and declining relative (and for many
absolute) living standards would have been very much harder to proceed
with even than it was. In the early 1980s, oil revenues were almost exactly
commensurate with the burgeoning social security bill.9 Yet the importance
of North Sea oil while it of course features in specialist economic histories
remains largely absent from the narrative of contemporary British history
currently being established. In Jackson and Saunders recent, and muchpraised essay-collection, Making Thatchers Britain,10 North Sea Oil is
indexed only three times, the most substantial reference, ironically, being to
the observation that as Andrew Marr has noted, [Thatcher] barely
mentioned North Sea oil in her memoirs!11 Jackson and Saunders (and their
fellow-authors) are far from alone amongst historians of contemporary
Britain in following Thatchers example and passing over in virtual silence
this key element in the story of Thatcherisms origins and thereby drawing
attention away from the stories of the workers who, inadvertently, helped
Terry Brotherstone
made her project viable and then had to fight a bitter struggle against the
anti-union outlook that was fundamental to it.
All this leads me to think that there is a more-than-usually sharp
contradiction between how rank-and-file participants understand their
involvement in the miners strike and the offshore workers action and the
way historians are now interpreting them; and this idea also underpins the
decision to look at them in tandem, and within a Scottish frame. For me, it is
an important opportunity to revisit recent history, not just to ensure that the
workers story is told, but also to assess the part their perceptions can play
in critiquing what is becoming the received version of recent history. The
Establishment narrative of such events is often an apparently authoritatively
documented, top-down account. It provides an important part of the story,
but tends to rationalise what happened and close it off from the challenge of
memory, which is often raw and imperfect but which is also indispensable if
the object is to draw political lessons from those who fought for a different
outcome. Thatchers notorious slogan, There is no alternative (to
neoliberalism) even when it is criticised as underpinning harsh and
socially destructive policies has, in essence, been widely accepted by
historians who see their task as to explain developments from the standpoint
of when they occurred rather than to produce a theoretically-informed
critique with the benefit of hindsight. But hindsight with due respect to the
often-expressed opinion of archive-bound historians is a benefit; and the
history of 1980s Britain and the triumph of Thatcherite dogma looks very
(and importantly) different in the aftermath of the explosion of the financial
crisis at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Some of the evidence in what follows, particularly with regard to the
offshore workers actions, derives from my involvement in a major exercise
in oral history, the Aberdeen Universitys Lives in the [UK North Sea] Oil
Industry archival project.12 The theoretical discourse that has in recent years
taken oral history from a documentary focus on filling in the gaps that
conventional evidence-gathering leaves, to one of interrogating the role of
memory in penetrating more acutely into the significance of what actually
12
For the Aberdeen University research project to which this essay is in part a small
contribution, see Brotherstone, T. and Manson, H. North Sea Oil, its Narratives and its
History: an archive of oral documentation and the making of contemporary Britain,
Northern Scotland, vol. 27 (2007), p. 15-44. This describes the Lives in the Oil Industry
oral-history archive, available in Aberdeen and at the British Library in London, which
contains many interviews of relevance to the history of labour in UK offshore oil and
gas.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
139
140
13
Terry Brotherstone
14
Iles, A. and Roberts, T. All Knees and Elbows of Susceptibility and Refusal: reading
history from below. Glasgow: The Strickland Distribution with Transmission Gallery
and Mute, 2012.
15
Brotherstone, T. Labour History Resurgent?. Variant (Glasgow), no. 33, Winter, 2008,
pp. 6-7.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
141
142
Class initiated a school of labour history based on the microstory, not the macro-narrative. Much of the insight we now have
into the Bund, French syndicalism and Chinese workers in the
1920s [all subjects visited by Mason in his own book from the
standpoint of their relevance today] comes from work by
scholars following Thompsons approach. But in this new
labour history what gets lost is often story and significance. In
reaction to the narratives superimposed on facts by Moscow,
modern academics tend to avoid big truths within the life
stories of those they have rescued from oblivion.16
Academic historians in the UK interested in labour movements
though often politically committed usually write as though they see their
role as historians simply to describe, explain and analyse what is done to
workers and what they do, while the workers part is to do and be done to.
But the new crisis of the twenty-first century calls for a labour history, still
based on the conviction that class struggle remains central to social
progress, but recognising that the working class has changed profoundly as
a consequence of capitalist globalisation. Much that once seemed
comprehensible (and of practical political value) when studied within a
national framework, now requires to be understood as part of an
international process, as part of the making of an international class. It is a
transition neatly symbolised within British labour history by the way in
which, in the 1980s, the methods of class struggle traditionally located
within the quintessentially nineteenth-century energy industry coal were
passed on to those producing the global fuel of the twentieth oil.
III
The miners strike is conventionally described as a titanic struggle
between the neoliberal Thatcher and her socialist antagonist, NUM
President Arthur Scargill. This approach can make Scargills self-centred
obduracy the main question, drawing attention away from the bigger story
of the part played by the defeat of the miners union in the onward march of
neoliberalism and in the conversion of the leadership of the Labour Party to
the neoliberal cause (a process culminating, from 1997 to 2010, in Tony
Blairs and Gordon Browns New Labour governments). Serious socialist
historians, on the other hand, can only despair at the failure of the
16
Terry Brotherstone
For my earlier thoughts on this and the relevance of Scottish-based offshore workers to it,
see my Neither Parochial nor Soothing: Aberdeen and the future of labour history. In:
Brotherstone, T. and Withrington, D.J. eds., The City and Its Worlds: aspects of
Aberdeens history since 1792. Glasgow: Crithne, 1996.
18
Phillips, Collieries and Communities ..., Op.Cit. p. 31.
19
e.g. Beckett and Hencke, Marching ...Op.Cit.
20
Phillips, Collieries and Communities ..., Op.Cit. p. 20.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
143
144
21
22
For further documentation for this section, see Brotherstone and Pirani, Were there
alternative? ... Op.Cit.
Phillips, who interviewed a number of former Communist Party members for his book,
does not follow the critique implied here and made in Brotherstone and Pirani, Were
there alternatives ...? Op.Cit. There is scope for more work on this issue if
understanding of the political insights to be gained from the defeat of the miners is to be
further enhanced.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Terry Brotherstone
suggest that Scargill himself called the strike, wilfully refusing a national
ballot. There is ample anecdotal evidence and Phillips deals with this in
some scholarly detail that a ballot would have been seen as a betrayal of
those already acting over issues that had been building up over two years,
and not only in Scotland: there was also widespread anxiety in threatened
coalfields that those in areas that believed their pits secure (wrongly as it
was to turn out in the medium term) might be allowed to ballot others out
of a job without a struggle.23
Starting from a rank-and-file standpoint leads to a narrative in which
the national strike and its conduct were products of pent-up pressure to
which Scargill and his co-thinkers were struggling to respond, rather than of
ill-considered and politically inspired leadership militancy. Of course
Scargills response was conditioned by his belief that militant leadership
(especially his own) could inspire British workers to bring down a
Conservative government as they had in 1974, when a miners strike
during which Scargill first came to national attention helped provoke the
general election Heath failed to win. But the leadership of the British tradeunion movement (including those influenced by the now-divided
Communist Party: Scargill was close to the pro-Moscow wing, while
McGahey was a leader of the Euros) remained immersed in welfare-statist
social democracy and was ill-equipped theoretically to understand the
profoundly destructive change in capitalist political economy taking place.
In 1974 the global neoliberal wave had yet to gather force, making
the election of a Labour government albeit one lacking anything like the
programme of its 1945 or even 1964 predecessors a credible socialdemocratic alternative, which, with the support of trade-union leaders, could
paper over cracks in social control. By the mid-1980s, with social
democracy deeply divided and its dominant wing hesitatingly resetting its
compass in the neoliberal direction, that had changed. The miners action,
which Scargill wanted but did not originate, put on the agenda the need for
new theoretical thought, which neither he nor other social democratic and
Communist labour leaders were equipped to initiate. In their defeat,
despite the heroic determination of their struggle, the miners placed on those
revisiting the story of the strike, the obligation, not to indulge in whatmight-have-beens, but to dig much deeper into what these events meant for
understanding the period of history in which they took place.
23
Phillips, Collieries, communities ..., Op.Cit. pp. 3-6, 9, 62, 73-4, 83-4, 103, 144-5, 154,
172-3.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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IV
The action of UK offshore workers in 1989-90 following the Piper
Alpha disaster of 1988 in the North Sea, in which 167 men died has, as I
have argued, yet to enter the general historical narrative of the Thatcher
years.24 At the centre of the story is the establishment of a new organisation,
the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC).25 Its origins lay in a
perceived imperative to create a body that would mount more effective
opposition to anti-union employers than the official trade unions, and its
focus was on the need for action on the safety regime.
The most decisive impact of North Sea oil on the British economy
had come in the early 1980s when its revenues, it is widely accepted
(though not by most Thatcherite politicians) made a vital contribution to
funding the Thatcher governments early economic reforms on the basis of
which their neoliberal programme was launched.26 Previously, the 1970-74
Conservative government (particularly in the wake of the 1973 oil-price
crisis) had encouraged rapid exploitation of the resource, which, in the light
of the state of British industry, meant the granting of licences to multinational corporations with American attitudes to industrial relations. Only
minor social-democratic adjustments to this trajectory were made by the
Labour governments of the later 1970s, even when (from 1975) the leftwing
Tony Benn was Energy Secretary and aspiring to a greater degree of state
control.27 Anti-union attitudes prevailed, dovetailing with (and encouraged
by) the prejudices of the Thatcher government elected after the 1978-79
trade-union actions referred to as the winter of discontent.28 Safety to
which legally-secure trade-union representation could have contributed
substantially was a secondary consideration.
24
This section of the essay draws on Woolfson, Foster and Beck, Paying for the Piper,
Op.Cit. and Gourlay, Industrial Relations ..., Op.Cit. There is now also a two-volume
history by an economist of the UK North Sea oil and gas industry: see Kemp, A. The
Official History of UK North Sea Oil and Gas. London: Routledge, 2011.
25
Gourlay shows that the name originated from the initial relationship between the official
unions and the rank-and-file movement, and reflected the fact that the union officials
thought they could make use of such an arms-length liaison committee. But in so far as
OILC was the creation of the official unions it was soon to turn, for them, into
something of a Frankensteins monster.
26
See Brotherstone and Manson, North Sea oil ..., Op.Cit. esp. section 3.
27
Information from participants in the authors files.
28
For the Winter of Discontent refers to the spate of public service strikes in 1978-9,
vilified in the popular press, which played a major part in the rhetoric of 1979
Conservative election campaign.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Terry Brotherstone
29
30
31
See Brotherstone and Manson, North Sea Oil ..., Op.Cit. esp. pp. 34-6 and
Brotherstone, A Contribution to the Critique ... Op.Cit.
The collection of funds for the Piper Alpha bereaved highlighted further the demand for
equality: shop stewards queried giving money to the Aberdeen Lord Provost's [mayors]
Disaster Fund, because it was dispersed regardless of whether or not families were
entitled to death-in-service benefits.
Earlier in the 1980s McDonald and others had been helped to form local groups, in
Aberdeen and Glasgow, to facilitate union recruitment. A short-lived publication, "Bear"
Facts was distributed to construction workers. See too the interview with McDonald in
the LOI archive.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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148
reject further short-term hook-up agreements that did not involve full
recognition, and OILC formed in February 1989 was publicly launched
on the first anniversary of the disaster, July 5 1989.
It supported several offshore sit-ins and held many onshore
meetings leading to a summer of discontent, with action on many
platforms and some rigs. The disparity in wages and conditions for the
indirectly employed remained a major grievance. Some wage-andconditions gains came, but in the form of bribes (as McDonald said) to
head off trade unionism rather than steps to establishing it. One participant
remembers workers being aware that the oil companies were desperately
trying to do what they could to avoid the strike with offers of increased
pay, improved pensions and even private healthcare. 32 But promises to
facilitate platform ballots on union representation proved hollow. Marathon
Oil UK resorted to legal action against the sit-ins, arguing that OILC (itself
constituted to avoid anti-union legislation) was effectively acting as a proxy
for the engineering union.
OILCs aim was to transcend inter-union rivalry. It asserted its role
as an organising body and, when industrial action petered out in late 1989,
began to prepare for the following year. Its organisation was extended
geographically. It established an HQ in Aberdeen, financed by voluntary
contributions which also supported Blowout, a vigorous journal that echoed
earlier militant workers newspapers rather than the staid trade-union
magazines by then the norm.33 A One Union Discussion Document stressed
the need for unified action across the industry.
The main OILC-led action was in 1990. It is a reflection on the
effect of the anti-union culture and difficulties of organising in the industry
without a measure of employer and government support that this was the
one year since the oil had come fully on stream that the oil companies in the
UK sector of the North Sea faced concerted industrial unrest. 34 Rank-andfile pressure meant that the unions held back from concluding another
unsatisfactory agreement, producing a hostile reaction from the employers,
who cut off all consultation and almost certainly took steps to infiltrate
OILC, now seen as the real voice of offshore workers.35 Shell and BP,
32
Terry Brotherstone
aware that Lord Cullens enquiry into Piper Alpha, soon to be published,36
would shine a light on the whole industry, including its industrial-relations
culture, tried to head off action with wage increases and improved
conditions for all offshore workers forcing others to follow suit. The
unions formed a National Offshore Committee (NOC) to work with OILC
a rare moment when there appeared to be the possibility of united action.
A Continental Shelf agreement, not more money, was the issue. Working
to contract, building towards strikes hitting the autumn maintenance
programmes, was called for by OILC, with some thirty installations
responding by June.
The success was limited. Some workers, lacking a tradition of
solidarity, still feared reprisals or resented the loss of the earnings that had
attracted them to the industry and to some extent blunted their opposition to
unreasonable working conditions. Memories of the previous major action in
the early days of the UK North Sea in 1978-9, which had resulted in
considerable victimisations, weighed heavily in the calculations of some
older workers: there was, participants remember, a perceptible generational
split in levels of enthusiasm for action.37 Employers delayed maintenance
programmes their moments of maximum vulnerability. Inter-union rivalry
persisted. Militants wanted strikes rather than an overtime ban, especially
when further fatal accidents, and the sacking of trade unionists for
highlighting platform safety, drew attention again to the regime. The NOCs
registration campaign with a view to official industrial action was met again
with implacable employer opposition. OILC came under rank-and-file
pressure to act; and the first twenty-four hour action was called, some
argued prematurely, for August 2. Taken to court, OILC argued that the
employers case fell as it was based on a charge of trespass, a concept
foreign to Scots law; and that the occupiers were in any case involved in an
industrial dispute not a violation of property rights. The judgement was a
compromise leading workers to claim a moral victory but also to the calling
off of the sit-ins.
The intention here is not to retell the full story of the action, only to
draw attention to the value of studying it, and thereby giving it a proper
place in contemporary history. In the short term, the offshore workers
movement petered out; the Cullen Report on the Piper Alpha disaster led to
some changes in the safety regime, soon perceived by many (especially in
the light of the 1990s Cost Reduction in the North Sea programme) as
36
37
Lord [Douglas] Cullen, The Public Inquiry into the Piper Alpha Disaster (1990).
Information from participants in the authors files.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
149
150
more cosmetic than real;38 and the trade union leaders cut OILC adrift,
fearful that the tactic of using industrial action to pressurise the employers
would backfire and that all negotiation might be terminated. Their leaders
notably the Communist Party former hero of the famous Upper Clyde
Shipbuilders work-in of the early 1970s, Jimmy Airlie now denounced
OILC as a doomed challenge to the official movement.39
OILC survived, first as an independent, unofficial but legally
registered organisation, and now as a section of the Rail, Maritime and
Transport Workers Union (RMT). However one assesses that outcome (and
it remained a subject of controversy amongst workers themselves) OILC
created an important historical legacy through the surviving records of its
early struggles and its debates about their lessons notably in two
publications, Striking Out: New Directions for Offshore Workers and their
Unions (1991) and The Crisis in Offshore Trade Unionism (1992), in which
McDonald and his colleagues assessed the lessons of the industrial action
and set out to build a new union, and, even more interestingly, in the
uninhibitedly democratic correspondence columns of the early issues of
Blowout, put together by a very independently minded, politically aware
editor.
V
In conclusion, the twin narratives of strikes and conflict in this essay
rest on three essential arguments. First, the Thatcher years are overdue for
reinterpretation from the point of view of those who were on the receiving
end of the social consequences of neoliberalism. The purpose is not simply
to do retrospective justice to the defeated oppositions to Thatcher and
Thatcherism, but to contribute to a more profound theoretical understanding
of the period transcending the idea that however brutal the policy may
have been there [was] no alternative. Nor is this relevant for a revived,
politically conscious, historical agenda in Britain alone, since as Naomi
Klein has argued it was the Thatcher project in the UK that made
38
39
See for example, Woolfson, C. The Continuing Price of North Sea Oil: business
organisation and risk transfer mechanisms in the North Sea petroleum industry. In:
Brannigan, A. and Pavlich, G. (eds.), Governance and Regulation in Social Life: essays
in honour of W. G. Carson. Abingdon: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007.
A biography of Jimmy Airlie (1936-97), co-leader of the 1971-2 Upper Clyde
Shipbuilders work-in with the better known Jimmy Reid (1932-2010), would provide a
fascinating case study of the role of Communist Party politics in the Scottish trade union
movement in the second half of the twentieth century.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Terry Brotherstone
40
Klein, N. The Shock Doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism . London: Allen Lane, 2007.
For a critical argument about the relevance of Kleins chapter on the UK, see
Brotherstone, A Contribution to the Critique ..., Op.Cit. p. 70-1, 83.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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152
42
Carson pointed out that nineteenth-century factory legislation tended to take health and
safety issues out of the fraught ... arena of industrial conflict into one of supposedly
class-neutral state regulation; Woolfson et al. suggest that Piper Alpha was the moment
at which, in the mass consciousness of the workforce, this artificial and ideologicallysustained separation evaporated ... The unofficial movement which was formed, partly in
response to the tragedy, returned to elemental industrial demands which questioned the
totality of the established workplace regime rather than seeking incremental gains.
Woolfson, Foster and Beck, Paying for the Piper ..., Op.Cit., Conclusion; Carson, W.G.
The Other Price of North Sea Oil: safety and control in the North Sea. London:
Robertson, 1981.
Moody, Kim. Workers in a Lean World: unions in the international economy. London:
Verso, 1997.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Terry Brotherstone
from the cyclical upturns and downturns capitalism had experienced before.
This concept cannot be discussed in detail here, but it is, at the very least,
particularly in the light of the post-2007/08 global crisis, a hypothesis
historians who align themselves with Brecht in seeking to show that what
happens all the time is not natural should regard as a challenge. And,
facing up to the reality that this new period (however theorised) has given
the lie to simplistic ideas about inexorable working-class progress from
formation through trade-union consciousness to socialism, Moody both
reasserts the importance of struggles such as those discussed in this essay
and points towards trade unionisms future.
The ups and downs of trade-union organization and conflict [he
writes], along with other kinds of social struggle, are an
important part of the history and development of any working
class. In times and places where there is no mass socialist
movement, these rudimentary forms of struggle are those that
shape the thought of the most organized and active elements of
the working class.43
But what is needed now are social or community unions,
organised on the basis of human need defined beyond as well as within the
workplace. And such ideas are even acquiring traction in practical tradeunion discussion.44
Revisiting the problems of trade unionists in struggle during the
years of neoliberal advance and trade-union decline is important for the
development of this discourse. Trade unions if they are not to be simply
overtaken by different forms of working-class, and cross-class organisations
have, through struggle, to become vehicles for the development of mass
socialist consciousness, without which the radical social transformation
essential for humanitys future cannot take place. I hope that a new labour
history, focused on strikes and social conflicts, can make its contribution in
a way that the labour history which inspired many scholars in the 1960s
ultimately failed to do. I have tried to show that there are also important
experiences in the recent British working class, which, studied critically
43
44
Ibid., p. 303.
For the literature, see for example Tattersall, A. Power in Coalition. Ithica: Cornell
University Press, 2010 and McBride, J. and Greenwood, I. (eds.), Community Unions.
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Even from the conservative circles of the British
TUC there has emerged Wright, Chris. Swords of Justice and Civic Pillars: the case for
greater engagement between British trade unions and community organisations.
London: Trades Union Congress, 2010. The major UNITE union has recently begun to
recruit beyond the workplace.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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154
from the point of view of those involved on the front line, not only fill gaps
in the record, but also provide inspiration for rethinking what labour history
is and what its aspiration should be.
156
On the origins and evolution of the Catalan neighborhood association movement, see
Molinero, Carme and Ysas, Pere, eds. La construcci de la ciutat democrtica. El moviment
venal durant el tardofranquisme i la transici. Barcelona: Icria, 2010. I recently wrote my
PhD thesis on Spanish urban social movements from their origins to the triennium 1975-77.
Bordetas, Ivan. Nosotros somos los que hemos hecho esta ciudad. Autoorganizacin y
movilizacin vecinal durante el tardofranquismo y el proceso de cambio poltico. Cerdanyola
del Valls: Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona, 2012. It can be consulted at
https://www.educacion.gob.es/teseo/ imprimirFicheroTesis.do?fichero=33320
2
The relationships between political parties and neighborhood associations is analyzed in
Mart, Josep. Relaci entre Associacions de Vens i partits poltics. Barcelona 1970-1980.
PhD thesis. Barcelona: ICESB, 1981.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
presence and this political nature did not escape the notice of officials of the
dictatorship, as is shown in a 1974 police report on the Federation of
Neighborhood Associations of Barcelona (Federacin de Asociaciones de
Vecinos de Barcelona, FAVB): of the ninety-five member associations that
formed part of this umbrella group, sixty-five were marked as blue
supporters of the regime and twenty as red anti-establishment and
making demands.3 Different police reports on the Barcelona district of
Nou Barris adduced that some time ago [...] communist penetration has
been detected in the ranks of the Neighborhood Association, identifying
various political parties that have found in the legal existence of the
Neighborhood Associations a fertile ground to carry out tasks of agitation,
proselytizing and recruiting new militants.4
These red Neighbourhood Associations, such as in Nou Barris, were
the organizations that truly composed the urban social movements as they
are understood here, representing the popular neighborhoods, hosting a
greater number of partners and comprised of those who ultimately staged
the urban and anti-Francoist struggle based on a combination of complaints
against shortages in the neighborhoods and demands for freedom and
political and social rights. These movements centered on discourses and
practices that were both implicitly and explicitly anti-Francoist, to a certain
degree anti-capitalist and therefore against the current of the dictatorial
order. They demonstrated this through the assumption of open conflict and
the struggle for the street, democratic forms of assembly, the development
of proposals that went beyond complaints or opposition to a given situation,
the advance of their own projects of co-management or self-management,
and the construction of collective identities with a strong working-class
component based on what was considered the social debt to those who had
built the city.
Other evidence highlights the ties of solidarity between the
Neighborhood Associations and other social movements that fought against
the dictatorship. This was emphasized in a police report that noted that the
Archivo Histrico del Gobierno Civil de Barcelona (hereafter AHGCB), Informe sobre la
Federacin de Asociaciones de Vecinos de Barcelona y sobre el enfoque correcto de la
F.A.V.B., April 27, 1975. Fondo Gobernadores Civiles. Caja 52. Ayuntamiento de
Barcelona. Aos 1974-1975. Most blue associations were, in fact, street associations,
called light bulb associations, which grouped mainly traders of certain streets and whose
only activity was managing public subsidies for the adornment of streets with colored lights
during the holidays.
4
AHGCB, Semblanza poltico-social sobre la Asociacin de Vecinos del sector VallbonaTorre Bar-Trinidad (9 Barrios), Police Report, August 11, 1974. Fondo Gobernadores
Civiles. Caja 52. Ayuntamiento de Barcelona. Aos 1974-1975.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
157
158
AHGCB, Dos votos en contra adhesin S.M. el Rey de Espaa por parte Corporacin
Municipal esta localidad, Police Report, November 27, 1975. Fondo Gobernadores
Civiles. Caja 105, Ayuntamiento de Tarrasa, 1974-1975.
6
Archivo Nacional de Catalunya (hereafter ANC), Letter from the Neighbourhood
Associations to the Provincial Delegate of Official Trade Unions, November 12, 1974.
Fondo PSUC. 2352. Barcelona: Crides i manifestos unitaris. 1973-1974. The document also
appeared in the mainstream press and in Nuestra Voz [organ of the Neighbourhood
Association of Tur de la Peira / Vila Piscina / Ramon Alb], 2 (1974). The document was
signed by eighteen Barcelona Neighbourhood Associations.
7
ANC, Precisiones respecto a los trabajadores de Motor Ibrica en huelga, Committee of
Labour Commissions of Neighbourhood Associations of Barcelona (Coordinadora de
Vocalas Laborales de las Asociaciones de Vecinos de Barcelona), September 6, 1976.
Fondo PSUC. 2353. Barcelona: Federaci dAssociacions de Vens de Barcelona (FAVB).
1973-1980. This Committee published several numbers of a specific journal about workers
issues called Correo Laboral.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
159
160
11
AHGCB. Letter from Jos M Ferrer, Mayor of Cornell de Llobregat, to Jos Donadeu,
civil subgovernor of Barcelona, September 26, 1977. Fondo Gobernadores Civiles. Caja
616. Jos M Ferrer Panads. Caja n 29 [Subgobernadores]. Carpeta Asuntos Varios 1980.
12
All documentation on the conflict and the letters exchanged between the authorities may
be found in the AHGCB. Fondo Gobernadores Civiles. Caja 205. Ayuntamiento de Santa
Coloma de Gramanet 1974-1975.
13
AHGCB. Letter from the Mayor of Santa Coloma to the Civil Governor, July, 1976.
Fondo Gobernadores Civiles. Caja 398. CG: 126. I Delegacin provincial Ministerio de
Educacin y Ciencia. Snchez Tern Ortiz Snchez. 1976-2977.
14
Amnista. Nota sobre la campaa de 'Justicia y Paz', Nuestra Voz 2 (1974) o Poble Sec
por la Aminista!, Poble Sec, 3 (septiembre de 1974). About the demonstration see 1 de
febrer, Barcelona per lAmnistia. Grandiosa manifestaci, Treball, 434 (2 de febrer de
1976). Researchers may consult the document of convocation and the relation between the
diverse signatories in the ANC, Relacin de firmantes del escrito presentado al Gobierno
Civil, el 19 de enero, solicitando autorizacin para realizar una manifestacin ciudadana
por la Amnista. Fondo PSUC. 2350. Activitat de diverses entitats i moviments ciutadans
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
161
162
18
This was denounced in various forums: Ofensiva contra las Asociaciones de Vecinos,
Mundo Social, 219 (March, 1974), Tudela, Joan, El difcil parto de nueve asociaciones,
Grama, 73 (January 1975) or Giralt, Enric, Cinco asociaciones de vecinos llevan un ao
esperando su legalizacin, El Correo Cataln, March 25, 1976. Other areas of the country,
including Madrid, did not escape this reality: Lucas, Modesto Gonzlez, El difcil arte de
asociarse entre vecinos, Mundo Social, 226 (November, 1974).
19
AHGCB, Expediente Asociaciones de Matar, November, 1974. Fondo Gobernadores
Civiles. Caja 249. Ayuntamiento de Matar, 1974-1975.
20
AHGCB, Letter from Luis del Pozo to Martn Villa, April 30, 1975. Fondo Gobernadores
Civiles. Caja 249. Ayuntamiento de Matar, 1974-1975.
21
Repulsa por el atentado a unos locales de la Asociacin de los Nueve Barrios, La
Vanguardia, July 23, 1974; Atentado contra el Centro Social de Sans, La Vanguardia,
June 28, 1975; Atentado contra la Asociacin de Vecinos de San Andrs, La
Vanguardia, July 10, 1975; Artefacto explosivo contra un centro de vecinos,
Informaciones, January 5, 1976. These attacks and violence by fascist gangs continued
throughout the whole process of political change and, as recognized in a document from the
Police Headquarters in Barcelona in late 1977, had not only the acquiescence of the plice,
but their protection and direction. AHGCB, Panormica general de los grupos y
organizaciones derechistas y actividades desarrolladas por los mismos, Report of
Investigation Service of General Security Headquarters. Barcelona, November 14, 1977.
Fondo Gobernadores Civiles, caja 323. Quoted by Casanellas, Pau. Morir matando. El
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Despite all the obstacles, the political and cultural background, the
experiences of struggle and conflict, the organizational resources, the
discourses and the solidarities that were developed allowed the urban social
movements to face the battle beginning in the middle of the decade not only
from a defensive standpoint, such as refusing certain infrastructure projects
that threatened homes or complaining against the inadequate provision of
facilities and green areas; they also prepared the movements to develop and
put forward an urban alternative, with proposals for the provision not only
of the facilities, services and infrastructure required in their respective
districts, but also for the management and democratic planning of the urban
framework, for the articulation of a real and effective popular participation
in public services. The diversity of forms of struggle that were used give a
good account of this broad and qualified opposition: from the accumulation
of more than 21,000 collective challenges against the Regional Urban Plan
both by the Neighborhood Associations and by other citizens' organizations
to the organization of mass meetings and demonstrations, occupations of
land, stopping and dismantling public and private urban works, selfconstruction of parks and gardens, self-management of schools and the
preparation of so-called Popular Plans. The latter were authentic studies not
only of the deficiencies and requirements, but also of the installation of such
facilities, services and infrastructure that were considered necessary,
because, as was considered at an assembly which decided to devise one of
these plans, the city is ours because we have made it with our efforts and
sacrifices.22
The urban social movements reaffirmed themselves as one of the
main spaces of popular participation in Barcelona, as one of the central
nodes of a highly mobilized society that undertook the final offensive to
overthrow a dictatorship that, even with the death of the dictator in 1975,
still maintained a strong repressive and social control capacity that was
intended to allow the continuation of Francoism without Franco. Between
1975 and 1977, in addition to the urban struggles we mentioned against the
Regional Plan, there was also a diversity of conflicts that clearly revealed
the pressure exerted on the authorities by the urban social movements, even
before the death of the dictator as we have seen. If at the beginning of 1975,
Barcelonas Neighborhood Associations undertook a campaign for the
franquismo en crisis ante la violencia poltica, 1968-1977. PhD thesis. Cerdanyola del
Valls: Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona, 2011, p. 433.
22
S! Plan Popular. Plan Comarcal No!, 9 Barrios, (December, 1976). These Popular
Plans were mostly devised by 1977-1978. An exemple may be consulted in Plan Popular,
Grama (1978).
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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164
resignation of the eighteen not city councilors, who voted negatively for
the approval of a small budget for the continuing education of Catalan
teachers23, between June and November the associations of Cornell de
Llobregat and Santa Coloma de Gramenet explicitly expressed in two public
declarations the demand for democracy. These documents, endorsed by
different personalities from the local scene trade union members,
presidents of neighborhood and citizen organizations, priests, teachers,
professionals, etc. openly raised the problems of their cities, the urban
chaos, the poor facilities, services and infrastructure, unemployment, the
high cost of living, and noted, finally, that the divorce between the city and
the people [...] is the cause of this accumulation of problems and its
tendency to get worse [...]. According to the activists, this was because:
A municipality that has not been elected by the people, which
depends on those who have elected themselves, represents the
interests of the minority. Only a democratic city council which
is responsible for their actions before the population will answer
to the general interests of the population, and only this popular
power can deal with the vested interests.24
The urban social movements had reached a point of no return in the
process of empowerment: their organizations were strengthened; they built
increasingly audacious mass actions and radicalized their discourse. This
was what led them in the mid-1970s to hoist the banner of democratization
and deepen their proposals for political change. In a public document of
support to the Catalan Assembly (Assemblea de Catalunya), a diverse
political platform that motivated a break with the Franco Regime, the
neighborhood associations of Terrassa recognized this entity as the right
space for advancing, in a unified manner, the democratic goals [...] in
defense of popular interests25, while the associations of Sabadell, endorsed
by over nine thousand signatures, demanded the democratization of the City
Castell i Gassol, Joan, Los papeles del no al catal. Barcelona: Dirosa, 1975. A
declaration signed by various civic and neighborhood organizations demanded the
immediate resignation of the city councilors, the political normalization of Catalan and the
election of those who hold public offices [...] that are representative of the will of the
people, Repulsa de varias entidades barcelonesas, La Vanguardia, March 8, 1975.
24
AHGCB, Situacin poltica en el da de hoy en Cornell, City Council report, June 4,
1975. Fondo Gobernadores Civiles. Caja 50. Ayuntamiento de Cornell de Llobregat,
1974-75. The declaration was published in Manifiesto de los 22. Cornell por un
ayuntamiento democrtico, Tele/eXprs, June 1, 1975. The other declaration, that
reproduces entire passages of the preeceding one, may be consulted in ANC, Salvemos
Sta. Coloma! Manifiesto ciudadano de los 51. Fondo PSUC. 2392. Santa Coloma de
Gramenet. 1970-1975.
25
ANC, Declaracin de las Juntas de Vecinos. Fondo PSUC. 2393. Terrassa. Setembre,
1966 - juny, 1975.
23
26
Vinader, Xavier and Benaul, Josep M. Sabadell, febrero de 1976: una semana de huelga
general poltica, unpublished, Sabadell, 1976 and Pleno Municipal (30 diciembre 1975).
Informe de las Asociaciones de Vecinos de Sabadell, Can Oriach, 90 (1976), p. 31-34.
Quoted by Martinez, Ricard. El moviment venal a lrea metropolitana de Barcelona
durant el tardofranquisme i la transici: el cas de Sabadell (1966-1976). PhD thesis.
Barcelona, Universitat Pompeu Fabra,1999, p. 252-253.
27
Acerca la Federacin de Vecinos, El Carmelo, 19 (February, 1977).
28
9 Barrios y la Federacin, 9 Barrios, 1 (January-February, 1977).
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
165
166
29
31
In fact, housing occupations spread throughout other neighborhoods and cities from the
summer of 1977, happening again in this massive form in 1978 and 1979.
32
AHGCB, Reunin de S.E. con Delegados de Ministerios 1977. Fondo Gobernadores
Civiles. Caja 444. Reunin de S.E. con delegados de ministerios 1977.
33
AHGCB, Collective letter from several Mayors of Barcelona province to Civil Governor
Jos Mara Belloch, October 10, 1977. Fondo Gobernadores Civiles. Caja 328.
Subsecretara de la Gobernacin.
34
Murillo, Manuel. 40 aos de Rub. Rub [the author], 1995, p. 174
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
167
168
men have gained access, the municipalities are still the same,
arousing constant invectives by those groups who assumed
popular representation [...] our administration has neither form
nor support, [...] it is obsolete in a society devoid of any appeal
of authority, we are at the mercy of their demands [...].35
The urban social movements could not force all political change in
the sense that they were demanding for some years not so much because
of the limits of local democratization, which was achieved in April 1979
with the local elections, but rather because of the lack of a true grassroots,
participatory and horizontal democracy at the national political level. What
is certain, however, is that their actions, struggles, protests and constant
pressure on the authorities, even as an undercurrent to the political parties
that focused mainly on institutional battles from 1977 onwards, were
essential to block a continuity solution to the dictatorship and to the
definitive acceptance of several demands such as the right to adequate
housing and the need to build neighborhoods and cities based on urban
standards that emerged largely through their own proposals and actions.
35
AHGCB, Collective letter from Sabadell councilors to Civil Governor, September 19,
1977. Fondo Gobernadores Civiles. Caja 360. CG: 47. Ayuntamiento de Sabadell 19761978.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
s is well known, Antonio Gramsci did not participate in the First World War
due to unfit physical conditions. Nonetheless, he did somehow participate in
it through his work as a journalist for socialist newspapers, denouncing on a
daily basis not only the barbarities of the war, but also its stupidity and lies.
During the years of conflict, he was perhaps its most ruthless and coherent
critic in Italy; from that moment on, and during his whole career and life, he
continued to fight in the name of truth.2
Once his university companions (Tasca, Terracini, and Togliatti), all
socialists like himself, returned from the front, an old idea came back to life:
a newspaper. At that moment, the important headlines, aside from the
effects of the Great War, were the Soviet Union and the not-so-theoretical
international debate regarding the possibilities of a revolution in the
capitalist West; alongside these was a heated discourse regarding how to
update Marxist doctrine without falling into reformist revisionism.
The authors of this paper have worked together; however, the writing of paragraphs 1, 2,
7, 8 was by A. dOrsi, and paragraphs 3, 4, 5, 6, by F. Chiarotto.
2
See dOrsi, A. Gramsci e la guerra: dal giornalismo alla riflessione storica. In: Gramsci
nel suo tempo, ed. Giasi, Francesco. Preface by Vacca, G. 2 vol. Roma: Carocci, Roma,
2008 (I), pp. 127-53.
170
The amount of 6000 Liras necessary to bring the newspaper to life was recovered,
according to Togliattis testimony, by Angelo Tasca: see Ferrara, Marcella e Ferrera,
Maurizio. Conversando con Togliatti. Roma: Rinascita, 1951, p. 47.
4
Central State Archives, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Direzione generale di P.S., Affari
generali e riservati, 1919, K9, b. 53: dispatch of the head of cabinet to heads of office
press review. Cited in Spriano, P. LOrdine Nuovo e i Consigli di fabbrica. Turin:
Einaudi, 1971, p. 17.
5
The famous headline of the first issue read as follows: Educate yourselves, for we will
need all our intelligence. Rouse yourselves, for we will need all our enthusiasm. Organize
yourselves, for we will need all our strength. L'Ordine Nuovo, I, 1, 1 May 1919.
6
Spriano, P. Op.Cit, p. 25.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Sardinian writers work, declared: LOrdine Nuovo must become for young
socialists what La Voce was for the bourgeoisie: the core around which all
intelligence and willpower develops.7
2.
Gramscis work demonstrates that revolution, more than an act,
represents a process. At the basis of said process there must be the effort of
the working class to acquire political awareness, and thus cultural
preparedness. Hereby derives the crucial importance of the determination to
help the proletariat educate itself, (educate yourselves, for we will need all
our intelligence is one of the titles gawking from the newspapers front
page), and more generally the battle of ideas8, of pedagogical and cultural
work that would later provoke accusations of culturalism towards the
ordinovisti, as the promoters of the newspaper would soon be known.
Among these was the well-known recrimination by Bordiga and his group,
who backed the Neapolitan newspaper The Soviet: The need for education
calls for a convention of teachers, not socialists. One does not become
socialist through education, but rather because of the real needs of the class
they belong to.9 After all, a little over a year after the foundation of the
newspaper, Gramsci himself would draw up a critical judgment of it which,
in excessive terms, reduced the first few issues of the newspaper to a modest
cultural hotchpotch: nothing more according to the (excessively severe)
self-critical assessment of its very promoter than a producer of mediocre
intellectualism, with a predominantly pedagogical nature, supported by
vague resolutions:
When, in April 1919, three, four, or five of us decided [] to
start publishing the newspaper LOrdine Nuovo, not one of us
(perhaps) thought we could change the world, renew the
brains and hearts of the human multitudes, or open a new cycle
in history. Not one of us (perhaps: some did fantasize with the
idea of 6000 subscribers in just a few months) deluded
themselves with the
optimistic idea of a successful venture.
Who were we? What did we represent? What new message were
we the bearers of? Alas! The only sentiment that united us
Montagnana expressed such a remark at the Congress of young socialists in August 1919.
See, ibidem, p. 53. Regarding Montagnas role in the publication of Gramscis work see
Chiarotto, F. Operazione Gramsci. Alla conquista degli intellettuali nellItalia del
dopoguerra. Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2011.
8
This was the column of the newspaper edited by Palmiro Togliatti, which will be repeated
with the same title in Rinascita (Rebirth), in the postwar years.
9
Bordiga, A. Preparazione culturale o preparazione rivoluzionaria?, in LAvanguardia,
20 October 1912.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
171
172
10
Ibid.
Gramsci, A. Vita politica internazionale, in LOrdine Nuovo, I, 5, 7 June 1919, now
in ID., LOrdine Nuovo, Op.Cit., pp. 66-71 (67).
15
173
174
16
ID., Il problema delle commissioni interne. Postilla, ivi, I, 15, 23rd August 1919, therein,
pp. 176-79 (176).
17
ID., Operai e contadini, in therein, I, 12, 2nd August 1919, now in ID., LOrdine Nuovo,
Op.Cit., pp. 156-61 (159-60).
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
18
DOrsi, A. ed. I fucili nelle rotative. LOrdine Nuovo, i fascisti, Gramsci e Gobetti.
Una conversazione con Andrea Viglongo, Historia Magistra. Rivista di storia critica, I, n.
2, pp. 99-107 (102).
19
Togliatti, P. La battaglia delle idee, in LOrdine Nuovo, 2, 15 May 1919.
20 Matta, E. in LOrdine Nuovo, I, 1920. In SPRIANO, Op.Cit, pp. 226-30 (227 e 228).
21
Gramsci, A. Valori in Avanti! (Piedmont edition), 13th June 1919. Now in ID., Scritti
dalla libert, Op.Cit, pp. 307-308 (307).
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
175
176
22 Gramsci, A. Lo Stato e il socialismo, in LOrdine Nuovo, 28th June 5th July 1919;
now in ID., LOrdine Nuovo, Op.Cit., pp. 114-20.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
equal role compared to the other three typical facets of the working class
movement: politics, economics, and cooperation.23
This remained the peculiar viewpoint of the LOrdine Nuovo even
after having adhered to the theory and practice of Workers Councils: a
respect for art, passion for culture, and some sort of omnivorous hunger for
anything that could provide teaching. When speaking of respect for art, not
only was reference being made to a place for creativity, expression, and
research, but also to a form of truth, of the highest and most noble kind.
From this point of view, Gramsci and the other ordinovisti had to fight long
and hard against widespread stereotypes according to which communism
and art were incompatible. As previously mentioned, it was the magical era
of the Russian statu nascenti, when even Marinetti could find interested
listeners. At that time, Gramsci was easily able to compose an authentic
paean to a communism that glorified art, as opposed to a capitalist society
where poetry was subdued to the [] laws of supply and demand, by
merchants greedy for wealth and exploitation. The latter, whilst
artificially launching literary adventurers, let first-class artists die of
starvation and desperation, committing authentic crimes against living
creators of beauty. On the contrary, communism was on a different wavelength. Freeing men from their wage-slavery would allow them back into
the world they had been excluded from the reign of beauty and grace.24
However, the communist aspiration was directly and immediately
related to construction, since the revolution should be built, rather than
awaited: in fact, the factory, a physical, economic and organizational space
for industrial production, was also at the heart of society. Starting from this
vital organ, and through instruments of self-organization, the working class
could assemble the center of proletarian counter-power, repudiating the
bureaucratic separation between unionists and non-unionists. Internal
commissions who shortly after acquired the form of Italian soviets, i.e.
Workers Councils -, in the tomorrow would have to become the organs of
the proletarian power that would substitute the capitalist in all his functions
of management and administration.25 Clearly, Gramsci already presented a
formula here of proletarian dictatorship that led late Marxism to Leninism.
Nonetheless, in Marxism, this formula held an eminently democratic
meaning (the overthrowing of bourgeois dictatorship, with the difference
23
See ID., La cultura nel movimento socialista, in Il Grido del Popolo, 1st June 1918.
Now in ID., Il nostro Marx. 1918-1919, ed. Caprioglio, S. Turin: Einaudi, 1984, p. 77.
24
ID., Cronache dellOrdine Nuovo, in LOrdine Nuovo, 14th June 1919, now in ID.,
LOrdine Nuovo, Op. Cit., p. 78-79.
25
ID., Democrazia operaia, Op.Cit.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
177
178
being that here the great majority of the population in other words the
proletariat would dominate the meager bourgeois minority). How was
Gramscis version of the dictatorship of the proletariat unique?
First of all, according to him, proletarian dictatorship was the
movement that suppressed the order of capitalist production and created a
new order; it abolished private property of the means of production, and
established collective property. At the same time, however, proletarian
dictatorship would have a productive and organizational meaning: it would
allow an escape from the economic crisis of the postwar period, improve the
nations (and nations) economic fabric, and increase production itself: no
society can survive without production, let alone a dictatorship that, acting
within conditions of economic decay after five years of war, and months of
armed bourgeois terrorism, needs an extremely high level of production.26
However, according to Gramsci, proletarian dictatorship (which must stop
being nothing but a formula) possesses a strong pedagogical tension: there
is no improvisation yet socialism and the proletarian State cannot be created
from scratch. The communist practice of collective discussion had to be
launched in time for it to create a fabric of intrinsic solidarity, set the
foundations for a new proletarian life, and plant the seed of socialist
culture.27 Nonetheless, the essential core continued to be a pedagogical
work in the cultural realm, which had to help prepare and accompany the
revolution and the construction of the proletarian state, and of a new order.
This is the idea behind the renowned motto of the protests of 1968,
that truth is revolutionary. As Gramsci wrote: Saying the truth, and
reaching the truth together, is carrying out the communist and revolutionary
action.28 It is easy to see how communism, i.e. socialism in real terms,
has drifted apart from the practice of truth; nevertheless, it is even more
important to highlight that there existed this overt requirement at the origin
of Italian communism.
There existed a theory of revolution behind the willpower to create a
communist Party: ever since 1919 Gramsci identified an objective need for
revolution. Proletarian revolution is imposed, not proposed.29 This
position should be aligned with that expressed in the comments regarding
26
ID., I sindacati e la dittatura, in LOrdine Nuovo, 25th October 1919; now in ID.,
LOrdine Nuovo, Op. Cit., p. 256-62.
27
ID., Democrazia operaia cit.
28
Ibid
29
ID., Lo sviluppo della rivoluzione, , in LOrdine Nuovo, 13th September 1919; now in
ID., LOrdine Nuovo, op. cit., pp. 203-207.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
30
ID., La rivoluzione contro il Capitale, in Avanti!, 24th December 1917; now in ID., La
citt futura (1917-1918), ed. Caprioglio, S. Turin: Einaudi, 1982, pp. 513-17 and in ID.,
Scritti dalla libert, Op.Cit., pp. 244-47.
31
ID., Lo sviluppo della rivoluzione, Op. Cit.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
179
180
of changes of opinion and doubts: nonetheless, this relation stood at the very
core of the building of the revolutionary process. Without the objective
conditions there could be no revolution; there could be no revolution
without the subjective preparation of those who had to do it; and there could
be no socialism without a higher form of democracy.
5.
During the first elections of the postwar years (November 1919), the
Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano PSI) was widely
successful; according to Gramsci, this reflected the will of the masses: a
socialist government [that] would use in their favor the States
administrative, legal, military, and procurement apparatus. Nevertheless,
given what would be in the powers of socialist members of parliament, the
underlying issue was a different one, which could only be resolved with and
within the masses.
The masses must understand that the resolution of the terrible
problems of our times will not be possible so long as the State
will be based on private property and national-bureaucratic
property, so
long as industrial and agricultural production
will be based on the individual and competitive initiative of
capitalists and large landowners./ They must understand that a
radical solution must be found within the masses themselves,
organized appropriately so as to constitute an apparatus of social
power, the apparatus of the proletarian and peasant State, the
producers State. However, it cannot be an abstract, passive
conviction. The Party must show them proactive work,
reconstructive work: the Party must give the impetus for
proletarian and peasant Councils to become a reality, and not
remain dead words of a congress resolution. 32
In fact, the decisive phase of the development of Workers Councils
began in the autumn of 1919: after the constitution of the first Fiat Councils,
the idea started to visibly transform (certainly thanks the influence of Rosa
Luxemburg and Daniel De Leon on Gramsci) into a movement, which not
only became fully recognized within the PSI, but also started to become
known at the national and international level: the previous month, Gramsci
had met the English communist Sylvia Pankhurst in Turin (Togliatti would
later translate a series of Letters from England regarding the LOrdine
32
ID., La settimana politica, in LOrdine Nuovo, I, 27, 22nd November 1919, now
therein pp. 328-30 (329-30) and in ID., La nostra citt futura. Scritti torinesi (1911-1922),
edited by A. DOrsi, Carocci, Roma 2004, pp. 188-90.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
33
The Soviet of 3 October 1920, reporting on the discussion which took place at the II
Congress of the International Communist (July-August, Moscow-St. Petersburg),
underlined Serratis and Graziadeis positions, who believe the Turin group to be
undisciplined. Bombacci thought that it would be dangerous to value the trade unionist
tendencies of the LOrdine Nuovo, Op. Cit. in SPRIANO, LOrdine Nuovo e i consigli di
fabbrica cit., p. 115.
34
A. GRAMSCI, [not confirmed], Cronache dellOrdine Nuovo, II, 9, 9th October 1920,
now in ID., LOrdine Nuovo, Op.Cit., pp. 703-704.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
181
182
was above all else the denial that it was something arbitrary,
adventurous, unnatural [and not historically necessary]. It gave
the masses a theoretical
conscience, to create historical
and institutional values, and found States.35
1920 turned out to be a decisive year for the Councils, and
consequently for Antonio Gramscis notoriety: at the PSI Congress of
October 1919 in Bologna he was a semi-anonymous local delegate, whilst
during the course of the following year he managed to impose himself as a
recognized leader at the national level. Gramsci was strongly convinced that
1920 was a year to further develop the process started in 1919, a year which
he referred to as the year that has seen the dawn of the history of the
human kind freed from classes and intestinal wars.36 Based on events
taking place in Italy and internationally, as well as on ideas he gathered
from reading, Gramsci unraveled an ever richer line of thought, which
gradually became more precise and dissimilar to that of the other prominent
editor of LOrdine Nuovo, Angelo Tasca. The latter, despite his remarkable
effort to promote unity within the party and trade unions, tended, in
substance, towards diminishing the novelty and revolutionary charge of
Workers Councils.37 From this point of view, and at the more general
political level, Tascas political line, within a general trend of moderation,
progressively detached from that of the other three founders of the
newspaper, who, despite their differences, all held a distinctly more
revolutionary stand-point. From this, Gramscis relative isolation resulted,
when, in 1920, the time came to define a line for the autumn administrative
elections: split with Tasca, he did not identify with Bordigas abstentionism
either. The latter, after the II Congress of the International Communist, had
become a recognized national leader, with followers in the Turin section of
the PSI. Nonetheless, Gramsci was perhaps trying to distance himself even
more from Togliattis and Terracinis election craze. Subsequently, the
Group for communist education that he established was adhered to by only a
handful of comrades and in the August elections for Secretary in the Turin
Section, Togliatti was elected, instead of Gramsci.
6.
35
ID., Quaderni del carcere, Critical Edition of the Istituto Gramsci, ed. Gerratana, V.
therein, 1975, 4 vol. The citation is from Q. 3 (1939), p. 330.
36
ID., Lanno rivoluzionario, in Avanti! (Piedmont edition), 1st January 1920, now in
ID., LOrdine Nuovo, Op.Cit, pp. 373-75 (375).
37
SPRIANO, LOrdine Nuovo e i Consigli di fabbrica. Op.Cit, p. 89
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Lombardo Rdice, LO; Carbone, G. Vita di Antonio Gramsci. Roma: Edizioni di Cultura
Sociale, 1952, p. 88.
39
See dOrsi, A. Introduzione to A. Gramsci, Scritti dalla libert, Op.Cit..
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
183
184
the Councils clarifies all the more the gravity of the problems
regarding reconstruction, and how there exists no single formula
for their solution. [] Building a communal society means,
first and foremost, trying to use class struggle to create
organisms able to develop a system for all humanity.40
It was, thus, necessary to overcome the purely trade-unionist vision,
founded on the pursuit of objectives that were at the same time limited and
immediate, and assume a universalistic point of view. Turin represented an
exceptional position for the development and acceleration of the proletarian
movement. Socialism and proletarian dictatorship were, above all else,
needed to save the magnificent apparatus of industrial production,
intellectual production and propulsion of civil life which was this city;
Turin, in particular, represented a decisive historical force of the national
State, and forge of the Italian capitalist revolution, despite not being the
capitalist city par excellence, like Milan (real capital of the bourgeois
dictatorship). Turin, on the other hand, is the industrial city par
excellence, the proletarian city par excellence. The Turin working class is
compact, disciplined, distinguished as only in a few other cities around the
world. Turin is like one single factory: its working population is of one kind,
and is strongly unified by industrial production.41
Faith in the Turin proletariat, and in its role of guidance for the
communist revolution in Italy, immediately translated for Gramsci into
work towards the conquering of factories, to establish a potentially
substitutive power to capitalist command. This is what Workers Councils
were for, and in alliance with those created in rural areas; they would be an
instrument for the pedagogical and cultural transformation of the subjects of
the revolution (the proletariat). Moreover, it would be a tool for the taking
over of the economic system, recovering it from the state of decay the war
had plunged it into, developing it, redeeming it from capitalist relations, and
directing it towards the establishment of communism, with a constant,
strenuous effort towards productivity. What was, in Gramscis idea the
role of trade unions? Obviously trade unions also adopt a revolutionary
character if, and only if, their action stops being addressed towards
immediate objectives, and starts working towards a final goal which goes
40
Gramsci, A. Lesempio della Russia, in LOrdine Nuovo, I, 33, 10th January 1920,
now in ID., LOrdine Nuovo, Op. Cit., pp. 381-85 (381).
41
ID., La settimana politica, Op.Cit., in therein, pp. 386-90 (387).
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
42
185
186
7.
How did Gramsci feel about this defeat? His analysis was clear and
bitter. Nonetheless, his resolution and strength of will did not fade. And he
was the first to incite the proletariat, highlight its heroism, and theorize
regarding its invincible strength.
During the general strike, capitalism and State power
unsheathed all their weapons. The bourgeois State provided
Turin industrialists with fifty-thousand men under arms, with
armored cars, flamethrowers, light batteries; for ten days the city
was at the mercy of royal guards, the working class seemed to
have been annihilated, to have disappeared into darkness.
Industrialists, having raised ten million Liras, flooded the city
with posters and leaflets, hired journalists and barabbas,
provocateurs and strikebreakers, published a newspaper that
used the same typographical style as the strike bulletin, diffused
scaremonger news, false news, started associations, leagues,
trade unions, political parties, from every corner of the city;
[]; the only thing that the working class had to
oppose this
unleashing of capitalist forces was nothing more that its energy,
resistance, and sacrifice. Metallurgic workers lasted one month,
without salary: many of them suffered hunger, had to pawn their
belongings at the Mount of Piety; the rest of the working
population also suffered hardship, misery, desolation []. The
strike ended with a defeat; the idea that had brought the fighters
forwards was scorned even by some of the working class
representatives; the energy and the faith of the leaders of the
general strike was labeled as illusion, naivety, and a mistake;
once back in the factories, the proletariat had to take a step back
due to the terrible pressure enforced upon them by the ownerclass and the power of the State: a discouragement, a bending of
consciences and willpower, the undoing of class sentiments and
energy could be justified, the prevailing of bitterness could be
natural, a step back of the revolutionary army could be
predicted.46
Yet, even after this terrible experience, hope was not to be lost;
Gramsci adopted Romain Rollands motto, pessimism of intelligence,
optimism of willpower, and transformed it into the insignia of political
national FIOM and the Confederacy of Work, if they hadnt reached a compromise, the
workers could have resisted for who knows how long.
46
Gramsci, A. La forza della Rivoluzione, in LOrdine Nuovo, I, 2, 8th May 1920, now
in ID., LOrdine Nuovo, Op.Cit., pp. 518-20 (518-19); and in ID., Scritti dalla libert,
Op.Cit., pp. 363-65.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
action, but also of existence: Our pessimism may have increased, but our
willpower has not decreased.47 The great Mayday protest following the
strike of the clock-hands, which ended with a terrible police repression that
did not manage to wear down the peoples fighting spirit, represented for
him a proof that the Turin proletariat, despite having been defeated, had not
been won. And it was ready to fight.
[...] the hungry, the miserable, the flogged to blood by the
capitalist whip, the scorned by their own unaware or infamous
struggle comrades (?), have not lost faith in the future of the
working class, have not lost faith in the communist revolution;
the whole of Turins proletariat flooded the streets and squares
to demonstrate its belief in the revolution, to unleash against the
millions and billions of wealth of the capitalist class the human
strengths of the working class, the hundreds of thousands of
hearts, arms, and brains of the working class, to contrast the
safes with the iron battalions of militants of the proletarian
revolution.48
The weekly review of socialist culture, the LOrdine Nuovo, had
by this point become a declared instrument for the working-class
revolutionary struggle, and was recognized by Lenin as fully respondent to
the fundamental principles of the II Comintern.49 When commenting on the
first anniversary of the newspaper (a year of research, experience, taste,
networking; a year of uncertainties, also, errors, also, disillusions, also), its
author summarized the ideology of the ordinovisti as follows:
[...] the constitution of the proletarian State must be founded on
the factory, on the workers organization of the factory, in
whose hands industrial power, now held by the private owner,
must be deposited [...]. Having supported with honesty and
ardor the theoretical thesis and dependent practices of this line
of thought, the LOrdine Nuovo has won the sympathy of many
among the vanguard of the industrial and agricultural working
classes in Italy, and a lot of spite and hatred on the part of the
enemies of the working class.50
47
187
188
51
ID., Domenica rossa, in Avanti!, 5th September 1920, now in ID., LOrdine Nuovo,
Op.Cit, pp. 668- 72 (668-69) and in ID., Scritti dalla libert, Op.Cit., pp. 382-84.
52
It cannot be forgotten, for the sake of argument, that LAvanti! refused to print in
Milan the manifesto of the Turin section of the party, which invoked the solidarity of all
workers. The newspaper harshly commented on the strike, judging it as a painful
experiment, in Spriano, P. LOrdine Nuovo e i Consigli, Op.Cit., p. 99.
53
See the letter of 28 January 1924, in Togliatti, P. La formazione del gruppo dirigente del
Partito comunista italiano nel 1923-1924. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1962, pp. 461-62.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
189
190
55
de Felice, F. Serrati, Bordiga, Gramsci e il problema della rivoluzione in Italia 19191920. Bari: De Donato, 1971, p. 391.
56
Ibid.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Through his work in the newspaper, he has been put into contact
with a living world that he had previously only known through
formulas in books. His most outstanding characteristics were his
intellectual loyalty and the complete absence of any form of
petty vanity or meanness: thus, he could not help but convince
himself that a whole series of ways of looking at, and thinking
about, the proletariat were false and unfair.57
10.
Ever since the editorial of the first issue of the newspaper, not signed
but without a doubt written by Gramsci, one could perceive a particular
tension between being an eminent member of the new party a section of
the Comintern and thus having a series of obligations -, and the originality
of a line which, before it was political, was intellectual and human. The
formula of the proletarian State, so often evoked, was now being more
57
Gramsci, A. La costruzione del Partito Comunista. 1923-1926. Turin: Einaudi, 1971, p. 157.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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192
parliament, but not Gramsci. This was not at all surprising; an acute
observant of the Comintern efficiently described the situation: Gramsci, a
lot more profound than other comrades, analyzes the situation fairly. He
acutely understands the Russian revolution. Yet, on the outside, he cannot
influence the masses. First of all, he is no public speaker; secondly, he is
young, short and hunchbacked, which has a deep meaning for listeners.58
After all, by this point Gramscis physical and psychological conditions had
once again worsened, and family problems had arisen to create new sources
of worry. His health and family problems, together with his dissatisfaction
with the prevalence of Bordigas line within the Party, heightened his
sensitivity. Reliable witnesses, such as Alfonso Leonetti, later spoke of his
nervousness, some degree of irritability, and his violent scolding of the
editors, demanding the uttermost seriousness, rigor, and dedication. We
must demonstrate to the owners he repeated that we are capable, what
the working class and its newspaper are capable of. If we do not know how
to manage a newspaper, he asked, how do we mean to be capable of
managing a state?
As a result of the experience of the Workers Councils and of the
LOrdine Nuovo, despite the failed attempt to reach immediate objectives,
the need to break from the Socialist Party arose clearly: Livornos turning
point took place precisely in that warm autumn under the Mole. Many
years later, Palmiro Togliatti confirmed:
At the end of 1921, the majority of the proletarian movement of
Turin became communist, and this fundamental acquisition was
never lost. [] Turins proletariat, in the most industrialized
city in Italy, always resumed its leading role in decisive
turning points. []. For this reason, when remembering the
founding of our party, it is necessary to recognize its roots in
that string movement which brought to the constitution of
Workers Councils. The latter were not a creation of Gramscis
intellect, but rather an organization arisen from the working
class itself; likewise, the separation from the socialist party was
not imposed, but rather spontaneous, a separation which was
rooted in real facts and in the conscience of the Turin
proletariat.59
58
193
194
Wessel Visser
Introduction
Skilled work in South African industries remained an almost exclusively
white preserve until the late 1960s, while at the same time persistent
shortages of skilled artisans were beginning to appear in the labour market.
As the South African economy continued to expand, there were no longer
enough white workers to provide all the artisans required. In addition, South
Africas white worker population was declining steadily. The
unemployment that had prevailed among whites in earlier periods had
effectively been eliminated and the labour shortage faced by industry was
aggravated by the tendency of increasing numbers of white employees to
choose higher-status, white-collar occupations in preference to manual
work. For the economy as a whole, the lack of skilled labour was becoming
an increasingly serious bottleneck. During the early 1970s, the expansion of
modern industry and related services was increasingly being retarded by a
lack of skilled and semi-skilled workers.
Black workers sensed that the labour market was turning and their
bargaining position was improving, especially for those with some skills and
experience. A new mood of confidence reinforced old grievances and
demands, and a long period of industrial quiescence was finally broken by a
remarkable wave of strikes. The movement started spontaneously in the
Durban-Pinetown industrial centre at the end of 1972 and continued through
1973 and into 1974, spreading to the Witwatersrand and other key industrial
The miners strike of 1979 and the impact of the Wiehahan reforms
196
Mar, G.P. The Durban Strikes 1973. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 2001, pp.9-27,3538,49,84,99; Feinstein, C.H. An Economic History of South Africa. Conquest,
discrimination and development. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005,
pp.191,230-231.
2
Ncube, D. The Influence of Apartheid and Capitalism on the development of Black Trade
Unions in South Africa. Johannesburg: Skotaville Publishers, 1985, p.114,143; Mar,
Op.Cit., p.45.
3
See e.g. von Holdt, K. Transition from below. Forging trade unionism and workplace
change in South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2003 and Forrest, K.
Metal that will not bend. National Union of Metalworkers 1980-1995. Johannesburg: Wits
University Press, 2011. For a discussion of the incipient intransigence in terms of black
labour relations in the mining industry, see pp.15-17 of this article.
4
Lever, J.T. South African Trade Unionism in an era of Racial Exclusion. PhD thesis,
UNISA, 1992, p.220.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Wessel Visser
Beinart, W. Twentieth-Century South Africa. Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001, pp.172-248.
6
Friedman, S. Building Tomorrow Today. African Workers in Trade Unions, 1970-1984.
Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987, p.167; OMeara, D. The Apartheid State and the Politics
of the National Party, 1948-1994. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1996, p.165; Lipton, M.
Capitalism and Apartheid. South Africa, 1910-1986. Cape Town: David Philip, 1989,
pp.308,310; Giliomee, H. The Afrikaners. Biography of a People. Cape Town: Tafelberg,
2003, pp. 544,598,607,609; Beinart, Op.Cit. p. 248; Barnard, H.J. Die Rol van die
Mynwerkersunie in die Suid-Afrikaanse Politiek, 1978-1982. MA-tesis, Randse
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
197
198
The miners strike of 1979 and the impact of the Wiehahan reforms
Afrikaanse Universiteit, 1991, pp.118; van Rooyen, J. Hard Right. The New White Power
in South Africa. London and New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1994, p.30; Cooper, C. The
Mineworkers Strike. South African Labour Bulletin, 5, 3, October 1979, p.20; Usher, D.
The strike that fell on deaf ears. Sunday Tribune, March 3, 1979, p. 20; Moenie die
Kiesers Vergeet!. Oggendblad, January 31, 1980, p.10.
7
Friedman, Op.Cit., pp.149-150; J.A. Slabbert en M.E. Steyn, Vakbondwese en
arbeidsverhoudinge. Roodepoort: Digma-publikasies, 1987, p.21.
8
Douwes Dekker, L.C.G. Aspects of the labour market. In: Matthews, J. (ed.), South Africa
in the World Economy. Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1983, p.76.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Wessel Visser
to work under black supervision. On the one hand, there were fears that they
could be replaced by blacks or that their wage levels could be undermined
by cheaper black labour. On the other hand, the numbers of white workers
in relation to the total South African labour force were declining and
therefore they became less valuable as a resource. Consequently their
political and bargaining power to influence labour legislation was also
reduced.9 For instance, in 1960 there were 26 white holders of blasting
certificates to every 1000 black workers in the gold-mining industry,
whereas in 1979 there were 17. As a result of new designs of mining at the
stope, improved drills, safer explosives, the use of more efficient fuses and
other technical innovations, fewer rock-breakers were required by 1979 to
supervise more black miners for a higher level of ore output than in 1960;
88 fewer white artisans were employed than in 1960, and 2,863 fewer semiand unskilled white workers.10
There were also other factors that placed the MWU in a vulnerable
position in terms of the expected Wiehahn recommendations. Firstly, the
unions intransigence on maintaining white job reservation was increasingly
undermined by artisan unions and other employee organizations in the
mining industry, which had begun to accept black workers into their
occupations since the 1970s. In terms of collective bargaining for the
position of white workers, the MWU thus became increasingly isolated. A
very important reason for the artisan unions complaisance compared to the
MWUs resolutely defiant attitude was that the positions of the technically
well-qualified artisans were more secure against black encroachment than
those of white miners, because such qualifications enabled these artisans to
move freely between industries. They were well qualified, while miners
required only Grade 8 school education and sixteen months training. Much
of their work consisted of supervising blacks, some of whom consequently
became proficient without formal training and certificates. These positions
occupied by white miners would be the first occupational level to which
black workers could be promoted. The white miners, unlike artisans, had no
trade affiliation to protect them and so they stood to lose more from reform
than most other white workers. The threat to their position was more
199
200
The miners strike of 1979 and the impact of the Wiehahan reforms
immediate and their fears about job security in that they could be replaced
and that their high earnings which depended upon barring black competition
were in danger were therefore rational. Because they did not have the
same skills as artisans, they relied on protectionist legislation to defend their
privileges.
The number of white miners in the mining industry also dwindled
because of the unpopularity of mine work as an occupational choice among
whites. The strong bargaining power of the MWU, which led to the
relatively high wage levels of its members, was thus situated in statutory job
reservation as entrenched by the Mines and Works Amendment Act of
1926. This protection could easily be eroded if white miners lost their
occupational monopoly in underground mining positions. Because of
economic growth and development after the Second World War, white
miners constituted a declining percentage of the total South African labour
force, while the entry of Africans and Coloureds into strategic skilled jobs
further eroded their bargaining power. Therefore their industrial and
political power declined accordingly. There was also a decline in the degree
of mobilization of white labour, a consequence of both prosperity and
complacency, and the centralized Industrial Council system, which
discouraged activity at plant level and left much of the work of unionists to
Industrial Council officials. The unions thus did not have tight control over
developments at the shop-floor level, where informal deals were often
struck between management and white workers. According to Lipton, this
loss of control over the changing labour situation often meant that at the
negotiating table the unions were faced with the fait accompli of black
advance.
Unions such as the MWU were also weakened by their unduly close
connection with the NP government, which led them to rely on political
support rather than industrial organization. A tradition of unrestricted access
to, and close alliance with, a pro-white labour government created a
situation in which the MWU began to rely on political backing, rather than
labour organization, to protect and promote its position. However, this open
channel to the government and even the Cabinet when they felt
disgruntled at legislation pertaining to the mining industry began to
change. With the MWUs dwindling influence as a labour and political
factor, the NP became less prone to take notice of the miners complaints. 11
11
Lipton, Op.Cit., pp.207,210-214,309; Cooper, Op.Cit., p.5; Wiehahn, N.E. Die Volledige
Wiehahn-Verslag. Johannesburg en Kaapstad: Lex Patria Uitgewers, 1982), pp. 730731,737; Hamilton, D.F. The Role of the Mine Workers Union in the Gold Mining
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Wessel Visser
Industry - A Present and Future Perspective. MBL thesis, University of South Africa, 1977,
pp.92,94; Giliomee, H. en H. Adam, Afrikanermag. Opkoms en Toekoms
(Universiteitsuitgewers en Boekhandelaars (Edms) Bpk., Stellenbosch en Grahamstad,
1981, pp.202-203; Friedman. Op.Cit., pp.163-164,166. For the MWUs close labour
relations with the NP government see Visser, W. Van MWU tot Solidariteit. Geskiedenis
van die Mynwerkersunie, 1902-2002. Pretoria: Solidariteit, 2008, Chapters 3 and 4.
12
Private interview with Mr. P.J. Paulus, July 7, 2001; Private interview with Mr. S.P.
Botha, May 27, 2002; Barnard. Op.Cit., pp.32,34,114; Hamilton. Op.Cit., p. 27; Friedman.
Op.Cit., p.164.
13
Private interview with Mr. S.P. Botha, May 27, 2002.
14
Jacobsz, J.A. Die Amptelike Standpunt van die Mynwerkersunie en die Standpunt van
Mynwerkersunie-lede ten opsigte van Werkreservering. Bedryfsosiologie Honneurs, PU vir
CHO 1980, pp. 10,12-13,20; Friedman. Op.Cit., p.163; Barnard. Op.Cit., pp.47,79; Alle
Blanke Werkers moet Lid van een Vakbond wees. Die Mynwerker. February 7, 1979, p 3.
15
Barnard. Op.Cit., pp.45,57; Paulus, P.J. Min Fanie Botha: S aan Werkers of die Berig
waar is!, p. 1, Swart vakbonde gaan erken word berig Die Vaderland, p.3 and MWU sal
nooit brood uit wit monde laat neem, p.6 in Die Mynwerker. March 7, 1979.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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202
The miners strike of 1979 and the impact of the Wiehahan reforms
16
Wessel Visser
There were also other factors which doomed the strike to failure.
Although there is conflicting evidence as to the status of the strike and the
motives behind it, and whether it was spontaneous industrial action or not,17
it seems apparent that the nature and reasons for the strike were not known
to the rank and file members of the MWU and no strike ballot was held
beforehand. Neither was the Council of Mining Unions, a joint body
representing all the employee organizations in the gold mines, informed
about or consulted on any resolve to strike. It seems that there were even
cases of pickets intimidating those miners who wanted to return to work as
early as 9 March 1979. The MWU executive also threatened to suspend
union members who wanted to resume work before the dispute was settled.
Both the Chamber of Mines and the MWU made various claims and
counter-claims about the number of strikers to prove its success or failure,
and to advance their own image among the miners in this way. On the gold
mines alone, the absentee figure was between 60% and 80%. The Chamber,
however, made use of the Underground Officials Association (UOA)
artisans who were not members of the MWU to fill certain positions held by
the strikers in order to minimize as much as possible any decrease in
production for the duration of the strike.
In the meantime Fanie Botha, the Minister of Labour, refused several
requests by Paulus calling on the Department of Labour to intervene in the
dispute. He declared that the government would not interfere and that the
employers and employees should resolve the dispute among themselves, as
the Minister regarded it as a domestic affair. Consequently, a motion of no
confidence in Botha was passed at a meeting of miners in the mining town
of Rustenburg. The MWUs efforts to arrange an interview with Prime
Minister John Vorster were equally unsuccessful. The Chamber was also
resolute in its resolve that no negotiations could be resumed unless the
strikers were prepared to resume work again. By 13 March 1979, a constant
stream of miners was applying for reinstatement in their posts. In the light
of all these factors, the MWU executive decided by 17 votes to 2 to call the
strike off and on 14 March the strikers began to return to work. According
to Paulus, the MWU executive took the decision at the request of the
Minister of Labour. The Chamber of Mines, though, claimed that the union
called the strike off because only 40% of the miners were still on strike by
13 March.18
17
203
204
The miners strike of 1979 and the impact of the Wiehahan reforms
Press views on the strike were that the miners failure to challenge
the states new labour dispensation was the result of weak leadership by
Paulus and the MWU executive, because they over-estimated white miners
willingness to strike at all costs on the principle of job reservation. In this
regard the flaws in the MWUs strategy to try and protect white workers
against a change in labour policy were exposed.19 According to Cooper, by
using strike action, Paulus tried to demonstrate that the white miner was
irreplaceable for the mining industry and that production would be seriously
affected without them. She also concurs with Lipton that, in the light of the
increase of black miners competence levels, white miners fears that
eventually they could be replaced as a result of pressure by the mining
houses were real. Ironically, the strike made the Chamber of Mines realize
that a white work stoppage created an opportunity for training blacks in
skilled mining tasks such as blasting. It also seems as if there was
dissatisfaction among the miners about the MWU executives handling of
the strike. MWU membership on the OOkiep mine also fell dramatically
from 223 to 52 after the strike. Many miners were simply not prepared to
lose benefits such as subsidized housing on the mines.20 This view was
confirmed by Peet Ungerer, who succeeded Paulus as MWU general
secretary. Ungerer acknowledged that the fear of hardship and hunger
among the wives and families of those men who were on strike put
tremendous pressure on the executive to call it off.21 Barnard also claims
that the outcome of the strike damaged the image of Paulus and the MWU
among white miners.22
With their refusal to intervene, the Minister of Labour and the
government indicated that they would not tolerate illegal lightning strikes in
the mining industry and that they were even prepared to prevent such
occurrences in the future by means of legislation. In a speech in Parliament,
Botha warned Paulus not to create his own form of mine politics.
Wessel Visser
23
OMeara, D. Forty Lost Years. The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National
Party, 1948-1994. Randburg: Ravan Press, 1996, p.130; Friedman. Op.Cit., pp.164-165;
Lipton. Op.Cit., p.208.
24
Cooper. Op.Cit., pp.12,22-23.
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206
The miners strike of 1979 and the impact of the Wiehahan reforms
There were various reasons for the inertia towards black unionization
at the time of the release of the Wiehahn recommendations and the white
miners strike of 1979. The Chamber of Mines and the white mining unions
were reluctant to contribute towards a climate conducive to the
establishment of trade unions for black miners. No trade union for black
miners existed to argue their case at the Wiehahn Commissions hearings.
The Chamber of Mines assumed the responsibility of informing the
commission what it should do in the best interest of black mineworkers.
Mining companies such as the Anglo American Corporation and
Johannesburg Consolidated Investment insisted that there was no possibility
of any black mineworkers union emerging in the near future and that when
it did, it would begin at mine level. The big mining companies rather
advised the continuation of controlled mine-level liaison and works
committees.
The Wiehahn Commission was enthusiastic to the idea of
establishing an industrial council where bargaining rights for black
employees could take place. Only registered unions, however, could
participate so that they were dominated by the white unions and could
remain that way because the existing memberships had the right to veto new
applications. Without different constitutions, the white mining unions could
prevent a black mineworkers union from ever becoming a member of an
industrial council for the mining industry in the event that one was
established. Neither the Chamber nor the white mining unions were
impressed with this proposal and took no action to implement it.25
The mines were able to adopt this stance partly because they were
not subject to the same pressures for black unionization as those in
secondary industry. Because all but a handful of their workers were
migrants, housed in compounds on mine property ruling out any access by
union organizers to these hostels or workplaces, the mines had been able to
exercise tight control over their workforce. A further factor was the relative
white monopoly on both artisan and skilled production jobs in the mines. It
also ensured that black mineworkers would remain relatively unskilled and
thus easily replaceable if they attempted to strike.26
25
Allen, V.L. The History of the Black Mineworkers In South Africa. Vol. II, Dissent and
Repression in the Mine Compounds 1948-1982. Keighley: The Moor Press, 2003, pp.451452,455.
26
Friedman, S. Chamber of Mines Policy and the Emerging Miners Unions. South
African Labour Bulletin, 8, 5, April 1983, pp.27-28.
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Wessel Visser
27
207
208
The miners strike of 1979 and the impact of the Wiehahan reforms
30
Wessel Visser
33
Lipton. Op.Cit., pp.63,208; Lang. Op.Cit., p.471; Friedman. Building Tomorrow Today.
Op.Cit., pp.167,173; Hamilton. Op.Cit., pp.28,79.
34
Friedman. Building Tomorrow Today. Op.Cit., pp.165-166,177.
35
Barnard. Op.Cit., pp.52,56-58,64; Wat ons aanbied aan blanke werkers wat by MWU
beskerming soek. Die Mynwerker. September 13, 1978, p.4; Ons roep alle blanke werkers
op Vanderbijlpark. Ibid.,October 11, 1978, pp.1,3; 1000 Staalwerkers gereed om by MWU
aan te sluit. Ibid., November 22, 1978, p.1; Alle Blanke Werkers moet lid van een Vakbond
wees. Ibid., February 7, 1979, p.3; MWU werf wyd vir een groot vakbond. Beeld. January
29, 1981, p.5.
36
MWU Archives, Minutes of a Meeting of the General Council, January 27-28, 1981,
p.12; Ibid., Minutes of a Meeting of the General Council, January 25-26, 1983, p.20;
Friedman. Building Tomorrow Today. Op.Cit. p.176; Barnard. Op.Cit., pp.60-61; Private
interview with Mr. P.J. Paulus, July 3, 2001.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
209
210
The miners strike of 1979 and the impact of the Wiehahan reforms
37
MWU Archives, Minutes of a Meeting of the General Council, 27-28.1.1981, p.12; Ibid.,
Minutes of a Meeting of the General Council, January 30-31, 1984, p.22; Ibid., Minutes of
a Meeting of the Executive, June 23, 1982, p.1; Barnard. Op.Cit., pp.62,66; Cooper.
Op.Cit., pp.5-6; Paulus, P.J. Kragwerkers word lede van MWU. Die Mynwerker. February
25, 1981, pp.1,7; Ons open kantoor op Vanderbijlpark. Ibid., February 2, 1983, p.2; Baie
nuwe lede in Vaal-Driehoek. Ibid., June 8, 1983, p.3; Paulus, P.J. Mynwerkersunie n
toevlugsoord vir blanke werkers. Ibid., July 6, 1983, p.1; 400 Ambagsmanne en Myners
van Sasol Secunda nou lede van M.W.U. Ibid., August 31, 1983, p.4; Paulus, P.J. Die
Mynwerkersunie se voordele bly verreweg die beste. Ibid., September 28, 1983, p.3;
Paulus, P.J. Met 400 lede by Secunda vorder onderhandelings met Sasol fluks. Ibid.,
October 12, 1983, p.5; Paulus, P.J. Ons praat met ons lede by Yskor en Modderfontein.
Ibid., October 12, 1983, p. 5; de Villiers, R. Miners union spreads its wings. Rand Daily
Mail. February 10, 1981, p.2.
38
MWU Archives, Minutes of a Meeting of the General Council, January 30-31, 1984,
p.22; Paulus, P.J. Meer lede: MWU op pad na n blink toekoms! Die Mynwerker. August
22, 1984, p.1; Paulus, P.J. Ons groei van krag tot krag! Ibid., January 25, 1985, p.1;
Jaaroorsig deur Paulus. Ibid., February 8, 1985, p.4.
39
MWU Archives, Minutes of a Meeting of the General Council, January 30-31, 1984, p.7;
Cor de Jager lewer staatsmansrede voor kongres van die MWU. Die Mynwerker. February
8, 1984, p.5.
40
MWU Archives, Minutes of a Meeting of the General Council, January 27-28, 1981,
pp.1-2,4,8-9.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
Wessel Visser
acceptable to the union. But this schism left the MWU without a political
guardian or parliamentary representation.41
The MWU therefore gave moral and electoral support to the HNP in
the by-elections of 1979 and the general election of 1981. In NP-controlled
constituencies where white miners formed a large portion of the electorate,
these elections served as political barometers of white counter-reaction at a
time when the contents and implications of the Wiehahn report were still
fresh in peoples minds. For both the MWU and the HNP reciprocal moral
support had practical advantages. Since the HNP broke away from the NP,
the party showed few signs of growth, because the South African political
situation was turning away from racist Verwoerdian policies. The white
miners grievances coincided with those of the HNP regarding the
dismantling of apartheid. The MWU offered the party the ideal opportunity
to expand its membership as the HNP was the only political party to fully
support the abortive miners strike of March 1979. The HNP offered
protection to the white worker and saw the abolition of job reservation as a
move by the mine owners to increase their profits by employing cheap black
labour.42 Although the NP retained the mining seat of Randfontein in the byelection of 1979, the election results indicated a marked swing to the right in
what was regarded as a strong anti-government protest vote against the
Wiehahn recommendations.43
In the mining constituency of Rustenburg, the home of MWU
president Cor de Jager, the electoral swing towards the right was even more
phenomenal and the NP won the seat only by a small majority of 846 votes
over the HNP. And in the 1981 general election, De Jager stood as HNP
candidate in the mining constituency of Carletonville. The HNP, aiming to
become the white workers new political guardian, vowed to protect their
interests but, surprisingly, lost to the NP again as a result of internal strife
and an ineffective election campaign and strategy. 44 OMeara, Bekker and
Grobbelaar argue that material considerations also played a role in the
election outcomes. According to these analysts, the Afrikaner working class
41
211
212
The miners strike of 1979 and the impact of the Wiehahan reforms
realized that the HNP, despite its pro-white ideology, still did not possess
the means to increase their economic wellbeing. As long as the economy,
managed politically by the NP, would continue to raise their standards of
living, the majority of these workers would only symbolically acknowledge
the HNPs warnings that the Nationalists betrayed and sold them to the
Afrikaner and English capitalist class. The HNP failed to see the changing
material and structural circumstances that were taking place in South Africa,
especially as far as the budding materialism and middle-class norms in
Afrikaner society were concerned.45
The clearest indication of the MWUs anti-government political
position, however, was the moral support the unions leadership gave to the
new right-wing Conservative Party (CP) since its founding in 1982. This
party was founded in reaction to the NPs liberal reformist policies on racial
issues in South Africa. Soon after its establishment Paulus indicated that the
MWU agreed with party leader Andries Treurnichts criticism of the
Botha-Wiehahn labour policy and that they supported the CP leaders
point of view. The unions attitude towards the NP steadily chilled even
further and even turned to hostility.46 Therefore it came as no surprise when
Paulus was approached to contest the Carletonville seat for the CP in the
general election of 1987. Although he won by a narrow margin of only 98
votes, this victory constituted a huge swing towards the right in mining
constituencies, as had been the case in 1979 and 1981. Paulus succeeded in
turning the NPs majority of 3 000 votes in the previous general election
into a CP gain.47
However, it became clear that in terms of influencing the countrys
labour agenda in a significant way, white labour had become a spent force.
The events of the 1970s and 1980s generally confirmed the long decline of
white miners as an influential political and economic entity. By 1976,
according to statistics of the Chamber of Mines, the (non-unionized)
officials associations on the mines had almost as many members as all the
45
Wessel Visser
5 Conclusion
All things considered, the mining strike of 1979 was a last desperate,
but futile, effort by white miners to obstruct a major change in the South
African labour dispensation based on apartheid legislation. Arrie Paulus was
well-known for using brinkmanship tactics50 to force concessions from the
Chamber of Mines and the government in order to protect white workers
privileges, but the 1979 strike backfired on the MWU hardliners. White
workers resistance to erosion of the job colour bar was less effective and
less fierce than expected.51
The report of the Wiehahn Commission was a bold move by the NP
government to test the white electorates readiness to move away from
discriminatory practices in South Africa. Although the Commissions report
did not bring an end to the official policy of apartheid, the implementation
of its recommendations to end discriminatory practices in the field of labour
represents a clear watershed in South African politics. Labour reform was
thus the first legislative initiative taken by the white minority government
towards the eventual dismantling of apartheid. The failure of the 1979
mining strike and the results of the political elections which followed in its
wake proved that the claim by right-wing political parties that the NP
government was acting against the interests of the majority of white South
Africans and therefore no longer represented them politically was grossly
exaggerated.
In the general election of 1989 (and also in the referendum of 1992)
a majority of the white electorate gave the NP a mandate to negotiate a
48
213
214
The miners strike of 1979 and the impact of the Wiehahan reforms
political settlement with the ANC. This was followed by President F.W. de
Klerks announcement in Parliament on 2 February 1990 that all antiapartheid political organizations and exiles were to be unbanned. These
negotiations led to the establishment of a democratic political dispensation
from 27 April 1994 and the institution of a de-racialized South African
Constitution in 1996.52
52
David De Vries
David De Vries
trikes often present a curious tension. They are basically local events,
framed in local contexts and impacted by local actors, who themselves are
placed along local traditions of employment relations and collective action.
At the same time, strikes are also part of larger continua of regional and
global competition and changes in prices of products that influence the
strategies of local employers and labor costs, which in turn impinge on
workers' decision to launch strikes, and on employers' resistance to workers'
demands. Such tension is relevant in particular to the relatively understudied
association between collective action and commodity chains 1, between
strikes and the distinctive labor process that commodity chains create, and
even more so when the latter are disrupted and changed by wars. Belligerent
tensions and wars cause havoc in commodity chains: production sites are
dislocated and relocated and the established balance between regions
distraught by wars and those that the latter benefit is transformed, often
resulting in the surge of strikes. Strike activity in the global diamond
industry is an apt case in point, as is well reflected in the case of the
transplantation of diamond production from Europe in British-ruled
Palestine.2
Van der Linden, Marcel. Workers of the World: Essays toward a Global Labor History.
Leiden: Brill, 2008, pp.173-207.
2
For the diamond industry in Mandate Palestine see De Vries, David. Diamonds and War:
State, Capital and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine. New York and Oxford: Berghahn
Books, 2010. The case here focuses on the 1940s and reflects a small part of the myriad
collective action in the global network of modern diamond making. For the commodity
chain, see Grodzinski, Paul. Diamond Technology: Production Methods for Diamond
and Gem Stones. London: N.A.G. Press, 1953; Even-Zohar, Chaim. From Mine to
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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216
David De Vries
For the diamond industry in Belgium see Laureys, Eric. Meesters van het diamant. De
Belgische diamantsector tijdens het Nazibewind, Tielt: Lannoo, 2005.
The number of diamond workers in Palestine rose from 60 in 1939 to 5,000 in 1946. In
Belgium, the number declined from 25,000 to 15,000 and in the Netherlands from 8,000
to 1,000 respectively. See Friedman, Avraham. "On the Crisis in the Industry," Niv Poel
Hayahalomim [Bulletin of Histadrut Diamond Workers Union], no 1. 1947 [H];
Proceedings of the First Congress after the Liberation of the Universal Alliance of
Diamond Workers, Antwerp 2-6 September 1946. The George Meany Memorial
Archives, Silver Spring, Maryland, RG 18 005/12.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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David De Vries
Belgium were barred, and the free movement of expert cutters and
inductors between the workshops was equally restricted. These aspects of
regimentation of the nascent industry and its mobilization for the war effort
made the manufacturers organization an extremely powerful cartel-like
operation. It was selective in accepting new manufacturers, it controlled the
wages paid, and it practically turned into an entrepreneurial community
espousing a culture mlange of profit, nationalism and the fight against
Fascism. Supervised from above by the British Government and
strengthened by a common sense of capitalist purpose, the diamond industry
could therefore well exploit the persistent American demand for polished
stones and the absence of competition from the occupied Low Countries.
However, the same factors also harbored the tensions that provoked at
least in Palestine's historical context quite an unprecedented vibrant strike
action.9
The swift take-off of the Palestine diamond industry during the war
was related also to another key determinant of workplace regimentation that
would influence strike activity. In contrast to tradition, Palestine asked De
Beers to specialize in one type of stone - the small stone (or Sand). This also
used to be Antwerps specialty and it also catered to the need of the De
Beers cartel to dispose of large reserves of such stones created by the
paralysis of the Low Countries. The specialization in the small stone turned
Palestine into one of the worlds leading suppliers. Furthermore, in
Amsterdam and Antwerp it took at least three years to apprentice a cutter,
and apprenticeship usually covered all types of stones and all cutting and
polishing skills. In Palestine the labor process was fragmented into a chain
or conveyor system, in which the apprentice learned just one phase of the
polishing process. Taylorization of production enabled the shortening of
the learning process to six months and the quickening of the entry of the
cutter to production and earning. This merging of capitalist efficiency with
considerations of time and international competitiveness well fitted the
thinking of Zionist economists who propounded the association between
Theodor Herzl and Frederick Taylor, between a national home for the Jews
and efficiency, a sort of Zionization of the labor process. It also attracted
the attention of the diamond people in London, some of them Jewish
Belgian exiles, who feared that Palestines consequent specialization in
small stones would not only surpass Belgiums pre-war supremacy, but
practically hamper its post war recuperation. These fears added to the
219
220
10
De Vries, Op.cit, 2010, pp. 94-101; Laureys, Eric. "De joodse diamantdiaspora en de
versnippering van de Antwerpse diamanthandel en -nijverheid tijdens de Tweede
Wereldoorlog, "Jaarboek van het Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie,
NIOD, 2003.
11
Six organizations were present in the diamond factories. The largest was the Histadrut.
The second was Histadrut Ha-Ovdim Ha-Leumit (National Workers Association),
representing the Revisionist Movement. The third represented the religious Hapoel
Hamizrahi. The fourth, Ha-Oved Ha-Leumi, represented the liberals while the fifth,
Poaeli Agudat Israel represented the religious orthodox. The sixth represented the
Communist Party and occasionally acted together with various splinter groups. During
the war about half the diamond workforce was unaffiliated.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
David De Vries
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
Jewish Community
Strikes
Strikers
Diamond Industry
Strikes
Strikers
89
71
88
123
82
2
13
43
15
3,317
4,185
9,258
15,220
7,805
1,400
2,613
5,017
4,166
% Diamond Strikers
in Jewish
Community Strikers
33.45
28.22
32.96
53.37
221
222
and to allegiance to the workplaces, the basic ingredients of any such social
pact.12
The diamond workers became strike prone much more because the
social pact with the owners of the diamond factories was regularly under
stress and often violated - and less because of traditions of militancy.13 After
all, the legacy of strike action among diamond cutters and polishers in
Amsterdam, Antwerp and New York was hardly of one of adversity and
militancy. The radicalism of the cutters and polishers in the Low Countries
expressed itself less through strike action and more in robust organization,
in the attainment of improved pay and working conditions, through
piecemeal organizational (and educational) action, and composed
demonstration of power. What the widely known leaders of the diamond
workers' unions in Belgium, the Netherlands, England and New York had in
common was labors reformism and gradualism.14 Much of their
organizational energy in their respective countries was spent on attaining
rapprochement with the diamond manufacturers and employers and less on
fighting them. This was what defined them as a sort of labor aristocracy, a
term usually connoting highly skilled jobs, craft workers and restrained
militancy. The respect of the employers for the leaders of the diamond
workers and to their organizations (e.g. the diamond workers union in the
Netherlands and Belgium or the Protective Union of Diamond Workers in
the US) testified not only to the sense of occupational commonality, but also
to the need to maintain industrial peace and wide areas of consent.15
It is difficult to substantiate why these non-radical legacies found
less expression in Palestine, where so many of the traditions of the industry
kept on feeding the daily life in the diamond workshops of Tel Aviv and
Netanya. Perhaps it was due to the fact that those arrived in Palestine were
diamond experts and not workers or union activists, and therefore the
12
David De Vries
Jerusalem Labor Council. 'The Diamond Workers and their Union", The Histadrut in
Jerusalem 19421944. Jerusalem: Histadrut, 1944, pp. 9294 (H). On diamond workers'
unionization see Van Tijn, Theo."A Contribution to the Scientific Study of the History of
Trade Unions," International Review of Social History, vol. 21, no. 2, 1976, pp. 214215;
Bloemgarten, Salvador. Henri Polak sociaal democraat 18681943, Den Haag: 1996,
chapters 7 and 10.
17
Paltin, Naftali. "Relations between the Manager and the Workers," Hayahalom, [Bulletin
of the diamond industry in Palestine], vol. 2, no. 9, 1945, p. 9 (H).
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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close. The manufacturers often preferred not to harm their workers and
instead digressed from the PDMAs pay policies and collective agreements
with the unions. In more extreme cases, the manufacturers chose to lock out
the factory and drastically decrease activity and renewing it again when
profit levels allowed. All in all, therefore, the manufacturer was incessantly
calculating the extent of his exposure to his sales levels in the US, to the
arrival of rough diamonds from Africa to Europe, to Londons stones'
distribution policy, and finally to the PDMAs collective pay directives. His
autonomy and freedom of action, so cherished by all the liberal-oriented
diamond manufacturers, were therefore limited, and on encountering these
limits he would opt to cut labor costs, otherwise it would not be profitable
for him to continue. This was a permanent source of pressure on relations
with the workers and it was often enhanced by the manufacturers and the
PDMA who exaggerated the extent of these dangers to the press.18
In this way, the world of booming diamond production in Palestine
unraveled itself not only as an attractive source of income, occupational
attainment, and mobility for the young Jewish diamond workers. It was also
unstable, fluctuating, and laden with threats to shatter the system of trust
and interest they shared with the manufacturers, the experts that taught them
their skills, and the workplace that provided them with a sense of social
order and economic future. The backing that could have been provided to
them from outside by a single solid union organization was frail.
Furthermore, the PDMAs successful splintering of labor organization in the
factories discouraged the traditional restraining barriers usually placed by
the labor movement on the social unrest of the urban workers.19
The age of the diamond workers was indeed a crucial factor in
explaining their propensity to strike. Upon entry to apprenticeship at a
young age, the workers expected to start earning after three months. Despite
the regimentation and arduous conditions of the work, they enjoyed the
benefits that piecework accrued to them. Willingness to work for hours on
end, the lack of familial commitment (other than to parents whom they
could quickly provide for), and flexibility in their adaptation to changes in
supplies and in sizes of stones all made them also susceptible to
spontaneous action. They could be children of members of one of the four
or five unions, but were hardly satisfied with the collective agreement in the
industry or paid little respect to the unions restraining attempts. For the
18
David De Vries
union organizers in the labor movement they seemed an unruly lot, wholly
dedicated to work and uneasily recruited to union work, distant from values
of loyalty to a labor movement and much more prone to organizational
independence than to traditional union frameworks.20
The Labor Department of the Palestine government was aware of
these characteristics.21 In the departments logic the propensity of the
diamond workers to strike was related to the large number of unions in
Palestine, and to the effect of the expansion of the industry on the entry of
large numbers of unaffiliated workers. These explanations may have had a
ring of truth to them, but they ignored the relation between the entry of the
unorganized and the PDMAs worker-selection policy. Furthermore, they
overlooked the relation between the great number of unorganized and the
fact that in times of low unemployment, workers affiliated with the labor
movement could have preferred not to enter the diamond industry because
they disliked its characteristics (exposure to fluctuations in supply, long
working hours, the instability of the employers, etc.) despite the relatively
higher pay rewards.
Clearly the multiplicity of strikes was related to the breakdown of
negotiations on collective agreements, to the workers realizations of the
increasing prosperity of the industry, and to their desire to have a share in it.
The young diamond workers interpreted the recurrent intermissions of
supplies and consequent changes in work schedules as a taken-for-granted
feature of their work experience that turned work stoppages into routine.
Manufacturers who wished to hoard rough stones in reserve instead of
distributing them for cutting were quickly blamed for breaching their
commitments to the apprentices and workers. Fluctuations in supply, and
intermittent attempts to cut labor costs and to empty collective agreements
of their original contents portrayed the manufacturers as unwilling to share
their high profits from the industry. The workers pride in acquiring a craft,
in their technological adaptability and in the culture of the skill they
cultivated, deeply affected this portrayal.22
The impact of the propensity of the diamond workers to strike and of
the weakness of the unions to restrain strike action was hardly confined to
20
225
226
David De Vries
25
Avniel, Binyamin. "The Role of the Manager in Labor Relations," Hayahalom, no. 7,
1944, pp. 3-4 (H); PDMA, Minutes, 13 September 1945, Netanya City Archive,
G/99/744; Report by the PDMAs labor department, May 1946, NCA, G/99/744(H);
Rosen, Op. Cit.; Etkin, Op. Cit., pp. 215268 (H).
26
Y. L. "Diamonds," Hapoel Hatsair [Periodical of Hapoel Hatsair Zionist-Socialist Party],
25 June 1942 (H); Kalisher, Arieh. "The Diamond Workers in their Strike," Misgav
[Bulletin of the Histadrut-affiliated diamond workers in Palestine], no. 7, 1944, pp. 910
(H); De Vries, David, "British Rule and Arab-Jewish Coalescence of Interest: The 1946
Civil Servants Strike in Palestine," International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol.
36, no. 4, 2004, pp. 613638.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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228
27
Shalev, Michael. Labor and the Political Economy in Israel, Oxford: 1992, pp.137144
and 166172.
28
On the national agenda see De Vries, David. "Drawing the Repertoire of Collective
Action: Labor Zionism and Strikes in 1920s Palestine," Middle Eastern Studies vol. 38,
no. 3, 2002, pp. 93122. On communists' approach see Gozansky, Tamar (Ed.). 'Arise, ye
Workers from your Slumber': Life and Collected Works of Eliahu Gozansky, Haifa:
Pardes, 2009 (H). pp. 45-98.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
David De Vries
external supply of rough stones and local industrial unrest made local
organizers of diamond workers aware of a similar association in the African
diamond mines between the regulated mining and the working conditions of
the South African, Belgian Congolese and Sierra Leonine miners. As the
diamond industry never knew a supranational workers organization (similar
to the Amsterdam-based Universal Alliance of Diamond Workers, which
referred to cutters and polishers) this awareness never expressed itself in an
organized international solidarity. However, the fact that the stones polished
in the various centers originated in those African mines provided a sense of
imperial connectivity that the war strengthened through the increasing
importance of noncombatant regions for international politics. The effect of
stone supply on the multiplicity of strikes made this connectivity another
aspect of an imperial social formation that tied through the diamond
commodity chain the experiences of diamond miners in Africa to those of
the cutters in Palestine. This was partly reflected in the growing awareness
by the owners of the diamond factories and the PDMA itself of information
on the tribulations of the diamond industry in other parts of the globe. It was
also expressed by the diamond cutters in Palestine who saw that apart from
their participation in the Zionist state-building project, they were also part of
an empire, of a colonial network, and of an international war effort that
crossed national borders. In the last year of the world war, this awareness of
the relations between the postwar international arrangements, the plans for
economic development, and their potential influence on the international
division of labor in the diamond industry deepened.29
29
On the atmosphere of an international strike wave see "Wage Cut for Diamond Cutters,"
Palestine Post, 26 June 1942; Inspector of Labor for the Southern Region to the
Secretary of the Jaffa-Tel Aviv Labor Council, 1 May 1943, LA/IV-250721-335; see
also Alexander, Peter. Workers, War and the Origins of Apartheid: Labor and Politics in
South Africa 19391948. Oxford: James Currey, 2000, pp. 27 and 129; for a wider
context see Atleson, James B. Labor and the Wartime State: Labor Relations and Law
during World War II. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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230
The two interviews below (both conducted over e-mail during the
fall of 2012) address different aspects of the problem of accurate, globallevel data on labour conflict. Both Sjaak van der Velden and Beverly Silver
have worked extensively with large data projects that aim to offer new tools
for researchers researching labour conflict locally and globally. As their
own projects which they also discuss here demonstrate, both the way in
which data are gathered and the ability to manipulate data on a large scale
can have a major impact on our interpretation of the patterns of labour and
class conflict.
232
Sjaak van der Veldens dissertation work was based on the massive
amount of data he gathered on strikes in the Netherlands, and subsequently
he has endeavoured to encourage the collection of similarly detailed data for
other countries as well. Van der Velden is currently the coordinator of the
Labour Conflicts project, based at the International Institute of Social
History (IISH).
The Labour Conflicts project aims to gather a moderated list of data
files on strikes, lockouts and other labour conflicts. Currently there are data
collections on the website for time periods of varying lengths for France,
Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Russia,
Ghana, and Argentina.
London and The New York Times, covers labour conflict in 168 countries
between 1870 and 1996.
Silver draws on the World Labour Group database in her critically
acclaimed book, Forces of Labour: Workers' Movements and Globalization
Since 1870 (University of Cambridge Press, 2003). Silver is currently a
professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University.
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234
the Hitler regime, but German researchers have written about strikes during
fascism. The same is true for the DDR [East Germany] during the pre-1989
era.
In a similar vein, the United States since the early 1980s has
excluded from official statistics all strikes with fewer than 1,000
participants. This gives a very biased picture of labour conflicts in that
country. The statistics still cover most of the days not worked, but
investigation of labour conflicts is about more than lost days. A small strike
can have an enormous social impact that does not register in the official
statistics. It all has to do with the aim of most official statistical bureaus to
get a picture of the economic consequences of strikes and lockouts.
In the ideal case, we would have access to microdata on many labour
conflicts from a number of countries, and then we might be able to redefine
these according to one standard definition.
Finally, microdata can help discover why workers go on strike.
Aggregate data can only give general pointers (e.g. metal workers are more
strike prone than workers in retail trade), but with microdata we may
perhaps gain a more fine-grained understanding of workers' behaviour. But
this has to be proven. Maria Bergman from Sweden and I have tried to do
something like this, and our piece will be published in a report of the
meeting I called when we started the Labour Conflicts project.
VH: Since we also have an interview with Beverly Silver here,
would you mind commenting on the somewhat different approach that
the World Labour Research Working Group (WLG) that shes been
associated with takes to gathering comparative labour unrest data? Did
you know of Silvers work when the IISH project was started and did it
influence your thoughts on collecting data at all?
SV: Yes, I knew the project. I think there are some problems with it.
First of all, there is the question of definition. In our database, there are
strict criteria for labour conflicts, whereas the WLG definition implicitly
depends on the definitions used by the journalists of two newspapers, The
New York Times and The Times of London.
The other problem is that relying on one British and one U.S.
newspaper will inevitably bypass much information. First, these newspapers
look at the world from a Western perspective, and second, newspapers are
looking for big news. When the tsunami struck Asia a few years ago it was
understandable that this news was regarded as more important than news
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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could change the aim of the labour conflicts group a little: we could make it
a repository where researchers can store their data.
VH: Do you have plans to create a master database that would
incorporate the individual collections now linked to from the site?
SV: Originally this was the idea. But suppliers of data were mostly
not in a position to use the format in a Microsoft Access environment I built.
So, now data comes in various ways and gets put on the website as it is.
When we started the project, I called a meeting in Amsterdam in
2008, and it attracted participants from Russia, Ghana and Brazil, among
others (a report will be published online this year by the IISH). The
discussions and comments were pretty fruitful, but other than that, the
meeting didnt really get the project much further.
The problem is that we are looking for microdata on a time series
scale. There arent that many researchers working with such data. They
either use aggregate data or just descriptions of a limited number of strikes.
The Russian project on our website is one of the few exceptions to this.
So Ive just kept on collecting data myself (e.g. on Germany,
together with Heiner Dribbusch) and asking people to send data. This last
has to be repeated every now and then, because people forget...
It's basically a matter of better this than nothing. The ideal situation
would be that all data were part of one database. Maybe in the future when
we have demonstrated that it is possible to collect a substantial amount of
data from different countries and all parts of the globe, we can apply for
additional funding to rework that data into a coherent database.
VH: Do you know of any research so far that has made
substantial comparative use of the data coordinated by the project?
SV: Unfortunately I don't know of such use of the data. This is
understandable because it is too scarce and dispersed. Some researchers
have used individual data collections from the repository, however.
VH: What is the current status of the project?
SV: Right now I am working on the project at a very slow pace on a
freelance basis - I was originally employed for about a year and a half on a
part-time basis, but now we basically have run out of funding. The limited
resources we have are mostly devoted to keeping the website alive until we
can regenerate the project. At the IISH we intend to apply for new funds to
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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get the project off the ground again, but its a matter of priorities. These are
hard times financially, also for the IISH.
Meanwhile, the website is up and people are welcome to take a look
at it and make use of the data that is now there. And of course, on behalf of
the IISH I would be pleased to see more researchers send their data to the
repository.
around the world including the type of unrest (e.g., strike, demonstration,
riot, factory occupation), the location (country, industry) and date.
This data provided the empirical basis for the analysis of the
relationship between labour movements and capital mobility in Forces of
Labor. Working with the World Labour Group data, I was able to show that
capital relocation did not produce a simple race-to-the-bottom for labour
worldwide. To be sure, when faced with strong labour movements,
capitalists have followed a recurrent strategy of relocating production to
new sites in search of cheap and disciplined labour. But strong and effective
labour movements emerged in each new site of production within less than a
generation. We could see this clearly for the leading global industry of the
twentieth century (automobiles) and for the leading global industry of the
nineteenth century (textiles), the focus of chapters 2 and 3, respectively.
From the analysis of the historical pattern we were also able to make
a strong prediction (which has proven in many respects to be accurate)
that by the first decade of the twenty-first century we would see strong new
labour movements emerging in the sites that manufacturing capital had been
moving to massively in the 1990s most notably China.
In sum, one of the main overall organizing hypotheses of the World
Labour Group project was: where capital goes, labour-capital conflict
follows. Here, our focus was on the interrelationship between worldeconomic transformations and labour movement dynamics. But something
funny happened once we collected the newspaper data for the entire 18701990 period. When we graphed the data as a time series of total number of
reports of labour unrest in the world, something we hadnt been particularly
looking for when we went into the data collection project jumped out at us.
The two highest peaks in the times series of world labour unrest by far
were the years immediately following the First World War and the Second
World War. We had not been thinking about the relationship between
geopolitical dynamics and world labour unrest when we initiated the data
collection project, but investigating this relationship in particular the
relationship between the world-scale patterning of labour unrest and world
hegemonic cycles (of which world wars are a particularly morbid
manifestation) became central to the World Labour Group project (and the
main focus of chapter 4 of Forces of Labor).
VH: Is the WLG database freely available to any researcher, and
if so, where and how can it be accessed?
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240
BS: An Excel file with the number of reports of labour unrest per
year from 1870-1996 for each country is freely available. Requests should
be sent to wlg@jhu.edu.
VH: Can you respond to the critique that relying on two
Western newspapers does not provide an accurate picture of world
labour unrest?
BS: I think the question about the reliability of the two Western
newspapers The New York Times and The Times (London) needs to be
answered in two parts. First is the question of the reliability of any
newspaper or combination of newspapers for creating indicators of labour
unrest. A separate question is the reliability of these two newspapers in
particular. Let me deal with these in turn.
One important thing to point out is that we never expected these two
newspapers (or any combination of newspaper sources) to provide a
complete census or count of all labour unrest events in the world.
Newspapers only report on a small fraction of the labour unrest that occurs.
Rather than using the image of a counting machine we should use the image
of a thermometer to think about the utility of labour unrest databases created
from newspapers, including the WLG database that is, as a tool for
understanding when/where the temperature of labour unrest is relatively
high/low relative to other times and places. Thus, times/places with a
relatively high number of newspaper reports of labour unrest in the database
should be times/places where the labour movement is relatively hot.
But what do we mean by hot? This brings me to another point
about the difference between databases of labour unrest created from
newspaper reports and official government-collected strikes series.
Government-collected strike statistics generally include all strikes (aim at a
complete census of all events). Newspapers, in contrast, tend to be biased
against reporting routine events (such as routinized and institutionalized
strike activity). They are more likely to see as news events that are nonnormative, involving actions (e.g., illegal strikes, particularly violent strikes)
or actors (e.g., groups that have been previously quiescent) or outcomes
(e.g., significant disruption to business as usual).
If you are working from a theoretical perspective that assumes that
most important social change happens as a result of non-normative waves of
social conflict (rather than during periods of routinized and institutionalized
social conflict) then the bias of the newspapers in favour of the latter
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242
and biases, and not jump to any conclusions that cannot be sustained given
the current state of the data collection. Such a cautionary approach to using
data is not something that is required just when using newspapers as a
source of data. It is required no matter what the data. It is no less important
when using official government collected statistics on strikes which have a
whole set of problems of their own. Researchers tend to take government
collected statistics at face value, but awareness of their strengths and
weaknesses and an assessment of what is actually being measured is as
important when working with these as with new databases created from
newspaper sources.
VH: What do you see as the main benefit of databases like the
WLG? What makes them worth the substantial investment of time and
resources?
BS: Many important questions about the impact of globalization on
labour (and vice-versa) cannot be asked, much less answered without a
database that captures the whole. In order to get a picture of the whole, it
was necessary to produce a new database rather than rely on existing
compilations.
Creating new databases is indeed a huge investment of time and
resources. But there are also huge drawbacks to relying on existing
compilations. Long-run official strike statistics exist only for a handful of
countries, most of which are wealthy western countries. This has led
researchers interested in long-term patterns of strike activity to focus only
on a handful of countries for which data exists. Sometimes researchers will
attempt to generalize to all cases (or to the world) from this handful of
cases. But, doing this is not an easily defensible move. If we work from the
premise that historical capitalism is a singular process that results in uneven
local level outcomes across time-space, then generalizing from a few cases
is bound to mislead us. The dependency theory insight that development and
underdevelopment are two sides of the same coin (and therefore one cannot
generalize from the experience of Britain or Western Europe to the rest of
the world in trying to understand and explain modernization), can be
applied to thinking about labour movement outcomes across time and space.
Rather than thinking of each local or national labour movement as a discrete
case, independent from all other cases, local labour movements should be
understood as being linked to each other through the dynamics of global
capitalism. So, the reasons to invest in new long-term world-scale databases
on labour and other forms of social unrest are compelling, notwithstanding
the huge investment in time and resources needed to produce them.
Workers of the World, Volume I, Number 2, Jan. 2013
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importance of transportation jumps out as well from the WLG data as does
the importance of the education industry more recently. And of course,
none of this data speaks for itself. To make sense of it we need theories
about the how local agency and the global processes shape each other; about
how the economic and political dynamics of global capitalism are both
shaped by and shape workers and workers movements.
VH: Do you see any recent developments as clarifying or
modifying your thoughts (as expressed in Forces of Labor) on the
present state of the labour movement or the potential of particular
sectors to emerge as key in labour struggles?
BS: The ongoing major wave of labour unrest in China over the past
several years is in line with the expectations expressed in Forces of Labor
that is, where capital goes, labour-capital conflict follows shortly. While
manufacturing capital, including automobile capital, had flowed in torrents
to China, in part attracted by relatively cheap and disciplined labour in the
1990s, over the past decade labour unrest has been mushrooming among
what had been widely assumed to be an exhaustible supply of easily
exploitable labour. The spate of strikes that hit the Chinese automobile
industry in the summer of 2010 in many ways looked like a continuation of
the Detroit (1930s) to Ulsan (1980s) story told in Forces of Labor. The
new title would have to be from Detroit (1930s) to Guanzhou (2010s).
Moreover, the recent spate of strikes reported among autoworkers in India
may turn out to be another instance supporting our key thesis linking capital
mobility and waves of labour unrest.
While the WLG findings about the relationship between worldeconomic transformation (especially capital mobility) and labour unrest
have received the most attention from readers of Forces of Labor, I think
that the geopolitical part of the analysis (chapter 4) is at least as important
for understanding where labour movements might be headed in the future.
After all, there is now widespread agreement that we are in a period of deep
crisis of US world hegemony. With the WLG data we were able to study
how labour movement outcomes were deeply enmeshed in the unfolding
world hegemonic crisis of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century
the crisis of British world hegemony. There is every reason to believe that
the geopolitical dimension will be central to labour movement outcomes in
the current period as well.
From the WLG database, we teased out two different patterns of
world-labour unrest in the period of crisis/breakdown of British world
hegemony (late-nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century)
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and the high period of US hegemony (the second half of the twentieth
century). Both periods had approximately the same number of reports of
labour unrest per year on average. Yet, in the period of hegemony the total
world reports were spread out relatively evenly across time (i.e., labour
unrest waves did not occur simultaneously in most countries at the same
time). By contrast, in the period of crisis/breakdown of hegemony, there
was a tendency for labour unrest to cluster in time, creating massive worldwide explosions most notably, but not only, after the First and Second
World Wars.
The fact that labour and other forms of social unrest have been
escalating simultaneously across multiple continents since 2008,
encompassing both core and peripheral countries, at the same time that there
is widespread talk of a crisis/breakdown of US world hegemony, raises a
whole set of interesting questions about the present that a comparison with
the past crisis/breakdown of world hegemony can help us illuminate.
VH: Do you know of any plans to expand the WLG database in
any form, or to create similar databases on related topics? In
particular, are there plans to bring the WLG up to the present?
BS: I am now working on updating the WLG database with a group
of PhD students at Johns Hopkins, this time relying on the full text digital
newspaper archives rather than the printed newspaper Indexes. The original
WLG database collection ends in 1996. By the late 1990s, the number of
reports of world labour unrest found in the newspaper Indexes each year had
reached a nadir; at the same time the printed newspaper Index had become
longer and longer over the years. Coders had to comb through hundreds of
pages to find just a few reports of labour unrest. It was a bit like looking for
a needle in a haystack. From time to time over the past decade I would run a
pilot study to determine whether it was feasible to restart the data collection
project; but rather than reach into the haystack (whether in print or digital
form) to find a few needles, I would always decide to wait for a more
propitious moment. The more propitious moment arrived in the summer of
2010.
In May 2010 I was on a flight from Seoul to Beijing where I picked
up a copy of The Financial Times (London). Virtually the entire front page
of the paper was filled with reports of labour unrest around the world
major strikes in major automobile factories in China, general strikes in
South Africa, food riots and cost-of-living demonstrations in Tunisia, and
mass demonstrations against austerity in Greece and Spain. The needle in
the haystack problem was no longer.
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To be sure, I always worked from the premise that the late 1990s lull
in reported labour unrest was not permanent. Indeed, a central theoretical
premise of the WLG project is that the worlds working classes and
workers movements are recurrently made, unmade and remade as an
outcome of both the creative and destructive sides of historical
capitalism. The underlying argument in Forces of Labor was that we should
have our eyes open for the emergence of new sites, protagonists and forms
of labour unrest as new working classes and workers movements are
made, and as established working classes (and social contracts) are
unmade.
The 2010 intuition about the propitious moment seems validated:
evidence in support of the hypothesis that we are in the midst of a new
period of upsurge of labour and social unrest worldwide has mounted in the
past two years. By expanding and updating the WLG database we will be
able to investigate systematically the varied protagonists of this new wave
of struggles. One important part of it, we expect, will correspond to the
making of new industrial working classes and to our hypothesis that where
capital goes, labour unrest follows shortly. Another important part, we
expect, will be linked to the related unmaking of established working
classes and abandonment of previously won social compacts, including
those around the welfare state. But part of the dynamic that we will observe
going forward might very well be tied to how labour unrest intertwines with
geopolitical dynamics, especially the crisis of US power on a world-scale.
As such, we will be on the outlook for similarities and differences between
the current worldwide resurgence of labour unrest and previous periods of
crisis/breakdown of world hegemony. Are we on the cusp of a new period
of in which major waves of labour unrest (rooted in both the creative and
destructives sides of capitalist development) cluster in time, creating worldscale explosions of labour unrest and fundamental anti-systemic challenges.
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